White House budget seeks to scrap 54 major NASA science missions
Experts found that the White House budget request for the upcoming fiscal year could defund 54 NASA science missions, including a spacecraft currently studying Jupiter and two planned Venus missions
Jupiter as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill CC BY
A review by The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to science advocacy, has identified 54 NASA missions that may be jeopardized by the White House’s budget plan for the next fiscal year. Among the missions at risk are one currently exploring Jupiter, a longstanding X-ray observatory, planned Venus missions, and a U.S. collaboration on a European rover intended for launch to Mars in 2028, among others.
The budget plan pertains to fiscal year 2027, beginning October 1, and proposes a 46 percent reduction in funding for NASA’s science program. This cut mirrors a previous proposal in the president’s budget request for the current fiscal year. While these proposals are not obligatory, Congress previously reversed significant cuts, ultimately providing $24.4 billion for the agency this fiscal year. Consequently, only the Mars Sample Return mission was canceled, despite its high scientific priority, due to perceived infeasibility.
The recent budget proposal, totaling $18.8 billion for NASA, does not specify which projects might face cancellation.
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However, experts at The Planetary Society reviewed this and earlier documents to determine which missions might be at risk. They found that Earth science and heliophysics departments could face the most significant cuts, with 17 proposed cancellations each, while astrophysics and planetary science departments might experience 10 cancellations each.
NASA has not commented on The Planetary Society’s analysis but pointed to a letter from administrator Jared Isaacman in the full budget request. The letter emphasizes that the FY 2027 President’s Budget Request underscores the principle that the United States must lead in space exploration for discovery, national prosperity, security, and inspiration. It asserts that with congressional support, NASA will continue pushing exploration boundaries, enhancing American technological leadership, and ensuring the U.S. leads the next era of space exploration.
Some ongoing missions are included in the potential cancellations. For instance, NASA’s Juno spacecraft, orbiting Jupiter for nearly a decade, the New Horizons probe, which has explored Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt object, and the OSIRIS-APEX spacecraft, which delivered asteroid Bennu samples to Earth in 2023, are at risk. OSIRIS-APEX is currently set to study the asteroid Apophis after a 2029 Earth flyby.
Future missions could also suffer significant setbacks under this proposal. The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) and Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy (VERITAS) spacecraft to Venus might be canceled, as well as NASA’s role in the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin Mars rover, initially conceived with Russian collaboration dissolved by geopolitical tensions.
International partnerships may also be affected. The budget could cut support for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, intended to advance gravitational wave science in orbit, and the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA) X-ray observatory, both ESA projects. The U.S. may also withdraw from the ESA-led Euclid telescope for dark matter and dark energy and the Japan-led XRISM mission, according to The Planetary Society.
Other potential cancellation targets include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the most powerful X-ray telescope after nearly 25 years in space, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, another leading observatory in its category.
Heliophysics missions potentially at risk include the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a collaboration with ESA that has provided crucial solar activity observations for three decades, and the TRACERS probes, which study magnetic reconnection in Earth’s atmosphere.
In Earth sciences, the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) satellites, which measure surface wind speeds in developing tropical storms, and the TROPICS satellites, which track tropical storms, may be considered for cancellation.
Several missions that monitor greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and its successor (OCO-2 and OCO-3), and the veteran Aura satellite, are also highlighted in the analysis.
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