Since the end of the Cold War, the US has dominated space exploration – but its star could be about to wane.
Donald Trump has proposed cutting Nasa's budget by a quarter, effectively cancelling current programmes, jeopardising planned missions and leaving scientists "reeling", said New Scientist. The draft 2026 budget, released last week, allocates just $18.8 billion (£13.9 billion) to the agency, a cut of almost 25% from 2025, slashing Nasa's workforce by almost a third, and halving funding for its science programmes. A day later, the president also "removed his nomination" of billionaire Jared Isaacman for Nasa administrator, leaving the agency in "turmoil".
It's the biggest single-year cut to Nasa's budget in history, and (after adjusting for inflation) the smallest budget since 1961, said US space-exploration advocacy group The Planetary Society. "This is the biggest crisis facing the space agency in its history," the group's chief of space policy told New Scientist.
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The reason for Isaacman's withdrawal as candidate isn't clear but he'd not been supportive of the proposed budget cuts, said the magazine. It leaves Nasa with only an acting administrator to lead it through a critical time.
These "major setbacks" also spell trouble for an agency that "faces stiff competition" from the commercial sector, said space policy expert Wendy Whitman Cobb on The Conversation. Planned and operating missions to Mars and Venus have been "targeted for elimination". The budget instead proposes a commercial "Moon to Mars" programme, under which Nasa would use systems such as Blue Origin's New Glenn and SpaceX's Starship to send Americans off-world.
"Since its founding, Nasa's mission has been largely centred on sending humans to space. If that role shifts to commercial companies, Nasa will need to grapple with what its identity and mission is, going forward."
But this isn't just about space, said Miles O'Brien on PBS. The budget targets Nasa science that has "anything to do with climate change". It cuts climate monitoring satellites, eliminates green aviation programs, and "zeroes out science education efforts, declaring them woke". More broadly it's part of the Trump administration's "wholesale targeting of federally funded science".
"What we see is a full-scale assault on science in America," said California congressman George Whitesides, a former Nasa chief of staff. "It's a poorly wielded chainsaw."
Some Republicans think that chainsaw "is required" to "refocus the federal science enterprise", said O'Brien. A lot of things "need reorientation", said Mark Albrecht, who helped lead the Trump transition team at Nasa. This reorientation could result in "a big push in new science that is managed differently".
Nasa also "offers plenty of targets" for cutting government waste, said The Economist. Artemis – "the late-running, $92 billion-and-counting programme to return astronauts to the Moon" – is one. The first four flights would cost an estimated $4.1 billion (£3 billion) each: "perhaps 20 times the price" of one of Elon Musk's SpaceX rockets. Other aspects have run wildly over budget and schedule, and either "do not function" or are "pointless". "Old Nasa hands admit Artemis is a mess" but it has proved "impossible to kill, or even modify".
Nonsense, said The Planetary Society in a statement. This budget isn't about efficiency; the proposal "wastes billions in prior taxpayer investment", as well as terminating "healthy and productive projects". It would cancel a third of Nasa's science projects, which would require "billions of new spending to replace", and create "economic uncertainty in the American industrial base". This is "an extinction-level event" for Nasa's "most productive, successful, and broadly supported activity: science".
What next?
"I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space," Trump posted on Truth Social.
Some of the names being "bandied about" are retired Air Force generals, said O'Brien on PBS, which "would indicate a shift in an entirely different direction" from the commercial future Isaacman – who has close ties to Elon Musk – represented. Many Republicans "would like to see space being moved more into the militaristic sphere".
The proposed budget must be debated and approved by Congress; Trump has requested it be finalised by 4 July. It could be "watered down, or even scrapped entirely", said New Scientist, "especially considering the proposed cuts would remove funding to many states, including some key Republican strongholds".
And yet my research suggests Congress "rarely appropriates more money for Nasa than the president requests", said Whitman Cobb on The Conversation.
