America's space agency, with a workforce of around 17,400. Its budget for 2025 stood at $24.8bn before Donald Trump's administration proposed cutting it to $18.8bn—the lowest level, adjusted for inflation, in several decades. The proposed cuts would fall disproportionately on scientific work, nearly halving the science budget to $3.9bn and eliminating around 5,500 jobs.
NASA has increasingly handed off human space flight to the private sector. The Space Launch System (SLS), a giant rocket built from 1970s technology with an estimated cost of more than $2bn per launch, was intended to return astronauts to the Moon but has been widely regarded as a congressionally mandated jobs programme. Trump's 2025 budget proposed abandoning SLS, along with the Lunar Gateway, a planned space station in lunar orbit. In its place, the budget included $864m to encourage a commercial replacement and $200m for private companies to demonstrate cargo transport to Mars.
The Artemis programme, announced in 2017, aims to return astronauts to the Moon. Artemis II, carrying a crew of four, splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean on April 10th 2026 after carrying its astronauts farther than humans have ever travelled before. Artemis III will test lunar landers in Earth orbit. Artemis IV and V will carry out the first crewed lunar landings, with a target of boots on the Moon by 2028—though the chance that China's more streamlined programme might deliver people there first is real.
On March 24th 2026 Jared Isaacman held a daylong event at NASA headquarters called "Ignition", turning the agency's vague aspirations towards a permanent Moon base into something concrete. The SLS will serve for Artemis II through V, after which NASA will transition to commercial providers. The Lunar Gateway has been paused indefinitely in favour of the Moon base. A new nuclear-powered mission to Mars, SR-1 Freedom, will repurpose Gateway's Power and Propulsion Element. Dana Weigel, who manages NASA's ISS programme, acknowledged at the event that "after more than 25 years of crewed operations…we haven't yet seen breakthrough products, capabilities, or services that generate significant demand" from low-Earth-orbit research.
NASA runs dozens of scientific missions across four main divisions: Earth Sciences, planetary science, heliophysics (the study of the Sun) and astrophysics. Under the proposed 2025 budget, Earth Sciences faces a 52% funding cut, planetary science 32%, heliophysics 46% and astrophysics 66%. Some 41 missions would be cancelled, including:
In 2025 Trump initially withdrew his nomination of Jared Isaacman, a businessman and private astronaut, as NASA administrator, with no reason given beyond vague allusions to "prior associations"; speculation centred on the withdrawal being a way to damage Elon Musk, who was thought to have championed the appointment. Sean Duffy, the secretary of transport, served as acting administrator. Isaacman was subsequently re-nominated and confirmed as NASA administrator in late 2025. He appears enthusiastic about human missions to Mars.
A 2023 Pew Research Centre poll found the American public preferred NASA to prioritise scientific work over crewed missions.
Trump proposed cutting NASA's science funding by 47%, the National Science Foundation (NSF) by more than half, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by some 40%, with its 27 institutes pared to eight—cuts adding up to nearly $30bn. On January 8th 2026 the House resoundingly rejected the proposals and adopted a three-bill package funding the main science agencies at levels similar to the previous year, or with smaller cuts and some increases. The Senate moved in the same direction, with strong bipartisan support.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas saved NASA's crewed space programmes (which have a heavy presence in his state) and added $10bn of additional funding as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama led a drive to release billions of dollars in impounded NIH funding. A coalition of 100 science-based organisations lobbied in states such as South Dakota, the home of John Thune, the Senate majority leader, to highlight the local effects of cancelled and frozen grants. United for Cures, a network of patient advocacy groups, organised a vast phone-call and email campaign as well as hundreds of trips by patients to the offices of Republican congressmen, and funded a seven-figure digital-advertising campaign targeting Republican lawmakers in vulnerable seats.
From 1980 to 2020 Republican lawmakers often approved science funding that exceeded Democrats' proposals, including for the NIH, NSF and Centres for Disease Control, according to a September 2025 study in Science. Dashun Wang, founder of an innovation institute at Northwestern University and an author of the study, surmised that Democrats may have historically lagged in science funding because they have a "whole range of competing priorities" such as health care, education or social insurance.
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