The 2026 NASA budget proposal would slash around US$6 billion (£4.4 billion) in funding. This is a huge reduction, amounting to around 25% of recent NASA budgets. The savings would mainly come from NASA science programmes, potentially devastating high-profile missions and international collaborations.
However, the budget proposal also represents an intentional redirection of NASA’s focus by the government through resource allocation. The state has long supported the development of a robust commercial space sector, and this budget is a further step in that direction.
Congress will have the final say and the cost to science could be high if the budget goes through without major amendments. One casualty could be Mars Sample Return (MSR), a joint endeavour with the European Space Agency that is intended to retrieve Martian soil and rock collected by the Perseverance rover and deliver it to laboratories on Earth.
An audit of MSR released in February 2024, suggested that the mission’s overall cost could exceed US$7.5 billion (£5.6 billion). The timescale for the mission was also slipping into the 2040s.
NASA agreed to look at quicker and cheaper ways of carrying out the mission, a process which is ongoing. But as a big ticket item under the agency’s Science Directorate, MSR could nevertheless be cancelled if the proposed budget were to be passed.
Other projects likely to be affected include the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which aims to investigate dark energy and exoplanets, and the DaVinci mission to Venus, which seeks to study the planet’s dense atmosphere and surface composition. Since the James Webb Space Telescope is already constructed and operating, it is expected to continue doing so.
However, broader funding reductions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, from US$7.3 billion (£5.4 billion) to US$3.9 billion (£2.9 billion), may limit the scope of future projects and the pipeline of early innovations.
The proposed budget could also lead to an accelerated retirement for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule. These are the vehicles designed to carry US astronauts to the Moon under a NASA programme called Artemis.
This programme aims to establish a permanent US base on the Moon, allowing astronauts to carry out science and to learn how to make use of lunar resources, such as the abundant water ice sitting in craters at the poles.
This ice could be turned into water for life support and chemically split to provide propellant for spacecraft. This could bring down the cost of space exploration because it would avoid having to transport supplies from Earth.
The retirement of the SLS and Orion would happen after the Artemis III mission, which is planned to be the first to land astronauts on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. This decision suggests that the administration has heeded those who warn that if China gets to the Moon’s surface before the US, it could damage American space leadership.
But it also implies that White House officials are in no hurry to build up a sustained presence on the lunar surface, as laid out under the Artemis plan, since finding replacements for Orion and the SLS will take time.
With each SLS launch costing upwards of US$4 billion, the rocket’s longer-term financial sustainability has been repeatedly called into question. Cancelling the SLS and Orion could also lead to thousands of job losses. These concerns are valid. However, in a robust industry, there is the opportunity for people.
Globally, the space industry is growing fast, with a value of US$570 billion (£427 billion) in 2023, having grown 7.4% from the previous year. A flexible and vibrant industrial sector could offer ample opportunity for displaced workers.
Other commercial players such as Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and Sierra Space are developing their own launch systems, crewed vehicles, and – in some cases – space stations. This competitive ecosystem accelerates innovation and reduces costs, which ultimately benefits the broader economy and the country.
Having said all that, critics say an extended hiatus in crewed lunar exploration while commercial companies develop these spacecraft may hand China the advantage when it comes to establishing a dominant presence on the Moon.
Past precedent
The White House budget proposals are a request and not law. Congress has the final say in whether these programs are retired and when. There are precedents: in 2010 the Obama administration proposed the wholesale cancellation of the second Bush administration’s Constellation program to return to the Moon. However, Congress intervened to rescue the Orion spacecraft.
While Constellation’s two rockets – the Ares I and Ares V – were technically cancelled, the SLS (which in many ways resembles the Ares V) was conceived as a compromise.
If approved, the proposed budget cuts would usher NASA more strongly towards an orchestrator or “systems integrator” role. This would see the agency convening and coordinating a complex web of commercial, academic, and international participants. NASA would therefore shift towards focusing on oversight, seeding innovation, and ensuring mission coherence.
The agency already has experience of public-private partnerships such as the programs that resupply the International Space Station with cargo and crew. The Artemis programme also aims to involve private companies as partners rather than simply contractors.
The proposed cuts would indeed disrupt the agency, but they are also emblematic of a shift in national priorities toward support for the development of space capabilities by private companies. Many NASA programmes carry high symbolic or scientific value – sometimes both.
But in some cases, their costs are difficult to defend when commercial alternatives could be developed for either the full mission or parts of the mission at a fraction of the cost.
As NASA shifts toward an orchestrator role and the commercial space sector matures, these changes, though painful in the short term, may serve the interests of US leadership in space over the long term.
- is a Professor of Strategy, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
- This article first appeared in The Conversation
