On May 30, NASA released more information about its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. If approved, it would result in the layoff of thousands of people and the closure of dozens of missions.
Mass layoffs
The published documents provide much more detail on the budget proposal than that released by the White House administration in early May. They allow for a better assessment of the consequences that their approval will lead to.
The draft budget for 2026 calls for $18.8 billion in funding for NASA, nearly a quarter less than in 2025. This is the steepest one-year cut in NASA’s budget in history, which would bring it down to the inflation-adjusted 1961 level.
This will inevitably lead to mass layoffs. If in 2025 NASA employed 17,391 civil servants, in 2026 their number will be reduced to 11,853 people. Entire scientific centers will be closed.
Dozens of canceled missions
The documents also confirm drastic cuts to NASA’s science programs. Their funding will be cut by 47%. More than 40 scientific projects will go under the knife. In particular, NASA will have to stop the work of interplanetary missions OSIRIS-APEX, Mars Odyssey, MAVEN, Juno, New Horizons, as well as shut down the Chandra and Fermi telescopes.
Among the projects under development will be closed Venusian missions DAVINCI and VERITAS, the mission to deliver Martian soil samples, Mars Sample Return, as well as several missions to study the Earth and the Sun. NASA will also have to end its collaboration with ESA on the EnVision and Rosalind Franklin missions. In the case of the latter, this would call into question its technical feasibility. Another important consequence of the budget will be the actual cessation of plutonium-238 production, which will make it impossible to send any missions to deep space in the future.
As for the new Roman telescope, NASA will attempt to salvage the project. However, its funding will be cut in half, which may lead to delays and postponement of the launch.
For obvious reasons, the draft NASA budget has caused an extremely negative reaction from the American scientific community, calling the situation nothing short of a disaster. In the future, the document will be submitted to Congress, which is responsible for the allocation of money to NASA. In the next few months, it will become clear whether Congress will want to support the mass closure of space missions or will act as their savior.
Provided by Spacenews
