White House again proposes steep NASA budget cuts

WASHINGTON — For the second consecutive year, the White House is proposing a major budget cut for NASA that would significantly reduce the agency’s science programs and International Space Station operations.

The White House Office of Management and Budget released April 3 a top-level budget proposal for fiscal year 2027. That proposal included $18.8 billion for NASA, a 23% reduction from what the agency received in a final fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill in January.

The proposal, at the top level, is similar to what OMB proposed last year in its fiscal year 2026 budget request. That also sought $18.8 billion, a cut of nearly 25% from what the agency received in a full-year continuing resolution for fiscal year 2025.

The brief summary released by OMB did not disclose many details about the NASA budget, but the 2027 proposal includes many of the same proposed cuts as in 2026. Science, for example, would be cut by $3.4 billion, or 47%.

“The Budget terminates over 40 low-priority missions to transform the Science program into one that is more focused and fiscally responsible,” OMB states. The two examples it gives are at the opposite end of the spending spectrum: Mars Sample Return, a program planned to cost up to $11 billion that Congress declined to fund in 2026, and SERVIR, a program to distribute Earth science data on which NASA spends $10 million annually.

The document doesn’t state which other missions would be terminated in the budget, but NASA officials have said recently they are reconsidering their support for extended missions, spacecraft that have completed their prime science objectives but are still operational.

The budget would also cut $1.1 billion from International Space Station operations, which cost NASA about $3 billion in 2025. OMB says the cuts will reduce funding “for operations, maintenance, and transportation to the ISS that is unnecessary given its looming retirement,” but added the budget will prioritize the development of commercial successors.

The White House proposal cuts NASA space technology spending by $297 million, or nearly a third of what was appropriated in 2026. The space technology funding will prioritize lunar exploration technologies while cutting “frivolous” projects, such as in-space sustainability.

As in some past budget proposals, the 2027 request would terminate NASA’s education programs, known as STEM Engagement, which received $143 million in 2026. The White House sought to terminate that program in its 2026 request, as the first Trump administration tried to do several times.

The White House’s proposal would increase spending on exploration programs by nearly 10% to $8.5 billion. That would fully fund the various elements of Artemis and includes $175 million for new robotic missions to help establish a lunar base, plans outlined by the agency last week.

The proposal adds the administration will ask Congress for permission to repurpose the $2.6 billion allocated for the lunar Gateway in last year’s budget reconciliation package for use on the lunar base.

Many congressional and space industry officials expected the White House to again propose steep cuts to NASA and other non-defense discretionary agencies in 2027.

“I would probably follow the betting and say that ’27 is going to look like ’26,” said Jamie Wise, a staff member of the House Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) subcommittee, at the Goddard Space Science Symposium March 13.

A March 13 letter signed by more than 100 members of Congress, nearly all Democrats, asked House appropriators to increase, not decrease, NASA science funding. The members requested $9 billion for NASA science in 2027, a 25% increase from 2026. They also asked for an increase in NASA’s overall budget “to adjust for the inflationary pressures affecting the aerospace industry.”

The members urged appropriators to effectively ignore the OMB proposal. “Swift, decisive action on the FY 2027 budget is the most powerful signal Congress can send to ensure that the instability created by the FY26 OMB budget request is not repeated,” they wrote.