Trump budget would slash NASA funds
President Donald Trump s proposed budget looks to end the Space Launch System rocket Orion spacecraft and Gateway space station central to NASA s existing Artemis activity but only after a triumphant moon landing as the nation remains in a race with China A preliminary overview of the White House s planned discretionary budget circulated Friday dubbed SLS and Orion as grossly expensive and delayed citing that each launch SLS rocket alone costs the regime billion and is over budget It s among billions in cuts for the overall billion proposed budget for NASA which for the current fiscal year is nearly billion Ultimately Congress will pass a budget and it often counters presidential proposals Related Articles Scientific societies say they ll do national conditions assessment after Trump dismissed analysis authors Door knocks and DNA tests How the Trump administration plans to keep tabs on migrant kids Email mistake reveals secret plans to end research on Head Start and other child safety net programs PBS chief slams Trump s executive order aiming to cut federal funding for PBS and NPR as unlawful Rubio takes on dual national prevention roles after embracing Trump s America First vision The Trump administration looks to drop funds toward Artemis future launches by million with a goal of ending them after the Artemis III flight The budget funds a operation to replace SLS and Orion flights to the moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would help more ambitious subsequent lunar missions the White House proposal stated The budget also proposes to terminate the Gateway a small lunar space station in evolution with international partners which would have been used to help future SLS and Orion missions NASA flew the fruitful uncrewed Artemis I mission that orbited the moon in and has its first crewed mission Artemis II gearing up to fly around the moon no later than April Artemis III still on NASA s calendar for summer would return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo in NASA s Office of the Inspector General in raised the red flag of rising costs of SLS and Orion noting that by the time it manages to fly Artemis III the activity would have topped billion That includes billions more than originally informed in as years of delays and cost increases plagued the lead-up to Artemis I Even nearly two years ago the audit disclosed NASA should consider alternatives Although the SLS is the only launch bicycle at the moment available that meets Artemis mission necessities in the next to years other human-rated commercial alternatives that are lighter cheaper and reusable may become available the audit mentioned Therefore NASA may want to consider whether other commercial options should be a part of its mid- to long-term plans to encouragement its ambitious space exploration goals That includes heavy-lift rockets such as Blue Origin s New Glenn that flew for the first time early this year as well as the in-development SpaceX Starship that has made several suborbital test flights To that end the Trump budget proposal looks to keep the human exploration budget the highest line item with more than billion including billion in new investments to pursue Mars-focused programs That s the only campaign with a proposed increase The biggest loser in the proposed budget is space science with cuts of more than billion followed by more than billion in cuts to Earth science mission endorsement and more than million from space machinery In line with the administration s objectives of returning to the moon before China and putting a man on Mars the budget would reduce lower priority research and terminate unaffordable missions such as the Mars Sample Return mission that is grossly overbudget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars the proposal stated
