The U.S. administration is proposing a $6 billion cut to NASA’s budget for next year, axing cornerstones of the agency’s Moon program and its ambitious plan to return rocky samples from Mars.
President Donald Trump’s administration released a so-called skinny budget on Friday, outlining the proposed funding for NASA’s 2026 fiscal year. The proposed budget highlights the administration’s “objectives of returning to the Moon before China and putting a man on Mars.” It would thereby phase out NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule, replacing them with commercial substitutes, and terminate the agency’s Lunar Gateway—an in-the-works space station that would be the first to orbit the Moon. The budget would also axe NASA’s Mars Sample Return in an effort to “terminate unaffordable missions.”
NASA has taken a lot of heat for its massive, fully expendable Moon rocket, pouring billions into SLS before admitting that it’s ultimately unaffordable. The 5.75-million-pound rocket was built using components from NASA’s Space Shuttle program, which ran from 1981 to 2011. It’s a capable, heavy-lift rocket that, unfortunately, has cost a fortune. SLS has already gone $6 billion over budget, with the projected cost of each SLS rocket being $144 million more than anticipated. That would increase the overall cost of a single Artemis launch to at least $4.2 billion, according to a report released in May by the office of NASA’s inspector general.
Trump’s close ally, rocket billionaire Elon Musk, has spoken out against the use of SLS for upcoming Artemis missions, criticizing the concept for its complete lack of reusability. Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, is also not a fan of SLS, referring to it as “outrageously expensive.”
“The Budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions,” the budget proposal reads. The rocket that’s the closest to being fit for the job will likely be SpaceX’s Starship.
The Orion capsule completed an uncrewed trip to the Moon and back in November 2022 for NASA’s Artemis 1 mission, and is expected to carry a crew in April 2026 for Artemis 2. Despite some issues with the capsule’s heat shield and hatch, it performed well during its first go. The budget proposal, however, suggests that Orion will be replaced after Artemis 3.
Although Artemis was conceived during Trump’s first term to return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo, the program is being torn apart by the administration’s first proposed budget. Another likely sacrifice from the Artemis program is the Lunar Gateway, a space station designed to orbit the Moon and support ongoing missions through scientific research.
The proposed budget is a 24% cut from NASA’s current $24.8 billion budget for the year 2025. The majority of the space agency’s programs will suffer budget cuts save for NASA’s human space exploration budget, which received an additional $647 million compared to the 2025 budget as the administration remains hyper-focused on returning to the Moon and landing astronauts on Mars. Trump’s administration allocated more than $7 billion toward lunar exploration and an additional $1 billion in new investment for programs focused on Mars.
Mars Sample Return (MSR), NASA’s elaborate plan to return samples from the Red Planet, wasn’t so lucky. The budget proposal referred to the mission as “grossly overbudget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars.” NASA has been struggling to figure out a way to make MSR work, but the mission has suffered from cost overruns and scheduling delays. The mission was originally capped at a $7 billion budget to return the samples in the 2030s. It was later revealed, however, that MSR requires an $11 billion budget, with an estimate of returning the samples by 2040. In light of a report released in 2023, NASA began considering an alternative architecture for its complex mission but the agency has yet to come up with a solid plan for MSR.
The budget also proposes reducing the crew size aboard the International Space Station (ISS) ahead of its planned retirement in 2030, when it’s expected to be replaced by a commercial space station, and possibly multiple commercial space stations. “Crew and cargo flights to the station would be significantly reduced,” the budget proposal read. “The station’s reduced research capacity would be focused on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs.”
NASA has been anticipating severe budget cuts under Trump, and the suggested allocation of funds has placed so many of the agency’s critical programs on the cutting board, wasting years of research and funding and opting for a commercial alternative instead.
