President Donald Trump’s NASA budget, of which a detailed version was released May 31, will slash the NASA spending from $24.8 billion for fiscal year 2025 to $18.8 billion for the fiscal year 2026, a funding cut of nearly 25%, the largest cut in NASA history. When corrected for (official) inflation, it would bring the agency’s budget to the level of 1961, before President John F. Kenedy launched the Moon mission.
A table in the budget document notes that NASA has 17,391 direct-funded civil servants in fiscal year 2025, but that this would drop to 11,853 under the fiscal year 2026 proposal, a cut of one-third.
On May 30 Space News reports, “NASA is proposing $3.9 billion for all of NASA science in fiscal year 2026, a 47% cut from what the agency received in 2025.”
Those reductions come in large part from canceling many science missions that are either still in the development phase, or have completed their primary missions but are being kept on because of their usefulness. Space News stated, “Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, said in an interview that more than 40 science projects, including standalone missions and contributions to other missions, were zeroed out in the budget.”
The draconian budget cuts, hitting every part of NASA, will destroy the purpose of NASA for space exploration, in particular the Moon-Mars mission; NASA is the leading agency for mankind making discoveries in aeronautics, astrophysics, and the lawful development and ordering of space and the universe, which for man, a space-faring species, is one of the most important features for his existence. It will vitiate science as a whole, of which space pioneer Krafft Ehricke insisted, space is a leading edge, whether President Trump grasps this or not.
U.S. Management and Budget Director Russell Vought devised the budget cuts; previously, he was the head of the lobbying arm of the Friedrich von Hayek-associated Heritage Foundation. Congress, reportedly, will try to restore some of the cuts. President Trump claims he wants to make America Great Again; if his budget for NASA goes through, he will be known instead as the man who devastated American science.
