Congress’s NASA and NSF Budgets Counter Trump, Fund Science

The first glimmer of hope for space scientists arrived earlier this month as Congress released the first drafts of its funding plans for NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The move is the next key step in passing 2026 budgets for the agencies. While the budgets need to be debated, consolidated, and eventually signed into law by President Trump by September 30th — any part of which is far from guaranteed — scientists are taking any bit of optimism they can get.

Planetary climate scientist Michael Battalio (Yale University) says he is feeling “heartened [and] somewhat relieved.” But even lighter cuts will still be damaging due to the costs of inflation, he adds. “They’re only cutting off one of our appendages instead of cutting us off at the torso.”

Both agencies will be funded within a larger bill called the Fiscal Year 2026 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill. In a strong rebuttal of the White House’s request to slash NASA science by 47%, down to $3.9 billion, the Senate draft proposed keeping NASA science funding at roughly current levels ($7.3 billion), while the House draft suggested 19% cuts (down to $6 billion). The NSF, which funds science like the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, was up for a 55% funding cut under Trump’s budget; the Senate suggested funding it at $9 billion (less than a percentage cut), and the House suggested $7 billion (a 23% cut).

Saying that the budgets are “‘the elephant in the room’ doesn't even really begin to describe it,” says astrophysicist Mike Boylan-Kolchin (University of Texas at Austin). “There's just no way around thinking about this or having this in the background.”

The pleas of scientists and space-advocacy groups to Congress over the past month seem to have paid off, at least for now. The Senate version stated that they were “concerned by the plan to end 55 missions across Science, which was driven by budget pressure rather than scientific value,” and that “mission cancellations without clear justifications may hinder scientific progress and U.S. leadership in space.”

To that end, the Senate explicitly called for funding multiple upcoming programs from Trump’s chopping block, including Lunar Gateway, DAVINCI, and VERITAS as well as the ESA-partnered gravitational wave observatory LISA and Rosalind Franklin ExoMars Rover. The budget also states that “operation of NASA missions far beyond their originally planned life is something to celebrate,” funding older threatened missions such as Juno, New Horizons, MAVEN, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Funding for the Nancy Grace Roman telescope nearly doubled from the White House budget, which should aid an on-time launch. (The House, for its part, suggests funding Roman $76 million more than the Senate).

The NSF language similarly refutes the White House, stating that the suggestion to shut down one of LIGO’s two detectors “would completely undermine Nobel Prize-winning observations.” And the Traffic Coordination System for Space, a satellite tracking program run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — another agency covered in the conglomerate appropriations bill — is fully funded despite Trump’s aim to dismantle it.

While the House has now left Washington for their August recess, they notably plan to keep the overall NASA budget flat by transferring $1.3 billion from science to exploration programs. This comes despite Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) securing $10 billion for NASA human spaceflight and exploration in the large tax cut and immigration enforcement bill passed on July 4th. The largest cuts would come from the Earth science division.

“Shifting away from science means that we're not taking a big picture look at things,” says Boylan-Kolchin.  

Still, “in any other year…we would celebrate and say we're basically there,” says Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at the Planetary Society. “But this is not a normal situation. It's a very aggressive interpretation of executive authority.”

Even though the appropriations process is still ongoing, the Trump administration is under fire for instructing NASA to prematurely align itself with the White House’s budget. Science programs have been ordered to formulate preparatory “closeout plans” and to stop issuing press releases celebrating new science results. The agency has also been encouraging employees to leave their jobs through the government’s Deferred Resignation Program. If Congress cannot pass a budget by September 30th, agencies will continue to be funded at 2025 levels, a scenario in which scientists and advocacy groups worry the White House can more easily halt payments and enact its agenda.

A July 18th letter, sent to Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (who also serves as the Secretary of Transportation) and signed by more than 60 members of Congress, asks that no NASA actions be taken in alignment with the President’s budget request before the final appropriations bill is passed. Doing so would “stand in direct violation of Congress’ role,” they write, and help cede space leadership to China.  

Representative George Whitesides (D-California), who signed the letter, says in an emailed statement, “It will take all of us speaking up and showing exactly why we need to protect science and research to reverse course” from the President’s budget. Otherwise, he says, “this calculated brain drain will cause lasting harm for generations to come.”

In a rare display of opposition, around 300 NASA employees signed a formal dissent to Duffy entitled The Voyager Declaration, which falls under a protected form of expression created in the wake of the Challenger and Columbia disasters. The dissent lists shutting down operational spacecraft, withdrawing U.S. support from international missions, shrinking the skilled space workforce, and decreasing agency safety as top concerns. It also notes that NASA typically gives the government a three-fold return on its investment by stimulating the economy and creating thousands of jobs — the dismantling of which would have economic impacts across the country.

Dreier says that the Senate hopes to vote on a bill soon that would combine NASA funding with money for veterans and the military as a way to make their support for the agency more formal. This would not replace the formal NASA budget process, however, which still requires a joint bill between the House and Senate in the fall.

Ultimately, if the U.S. fails to fund space science, “it's not going to be that somebody else picks up the slack,” says Boylan-Kolchin. “It's just going to be an overall . . . lack of knowing more about the universe we live in.”