Dozens of NASA’s missions to explore the cosmos could be in jeopardy under a budget proposal from the White House.
President Donald Trump’s administration, which released an initial budget proposal May 2 for the U.S. space agency, dropped more details Friday, May 30 about just which NASA programs it looks to cancel. All told, the budget request for the next fiscal year proposes slashing NASA funding by nearly 25% – from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion – mostly by eliminating a significant portion of the agency’s science portfolio.
Trump’s proposal, which would need congressional approval, has been lauded by acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro for “still prioritizing critical science and technology research,” she said in a statement.
But in its own statement, the Planetary Society called the proposed budget “an extinction-level event for the space agency’s most productive, successful, and broadly supported activity: science.”
A total of 41 science projects would get the ax under the proposal, which would be NASA’s biggest single-year cut in the agency’s history, according to the Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy organization.
Many of the science missions Trump looks to cancel are still in development, while others are extended operations with uncrewed vehicles already deployed to orbit.
Here’s a look at six different types of space missions, from Mars exploration to future moon landings, that could be under threat if Trump’s budget were to go into effect.
Mars missions: Mars Sample Return, orbiters
For years, NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission has sought to bring back a collection of rocks that could reveal details about potential past life on the Red Planet. The agency’s Perseverance rover has been scooping up and storing intriguing rock samples since it first landed in 2021 in the Jezero Crater.
But ballooning costs and mission delays have hampered both NASA and the European Space Agency in executing a plan to actually retrieve and transport the samples to Earth for scientists to study further.
Meanwhile, Mars Odyssey and MAVEN are two spacecrafts that have been orbiting Mars for years.
While those missions could be eliminated, Trump looks to inject another $1 billion to tap the private sector to help lay the groundwork for future Mars exploration. That includes establishing a new NASA initiative called the Commercial Mars Payload Services Program (CMPS). The program would operate similar to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program by awarding contracts to private companies that would develop spacesuits, vehicles and other technology aimed at reaching the Red Planet.
Outer solar system: New Horizons, Juno
The New Horizons spacecraft became the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close when it flew by the dwarf planet and its moons on July 14, 2015.
In 2019, the space probe reached the Kuiper belt – a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending far beyond the orbit of Neptune – where it continues to make discoveries about the outer solar system.
The Juno probe, meanwhile, continues to reveal new insights into the gas giant Jupiter and its Jovian moons nine years after arriving in 2016. The spacecraft recently relayed data unmasking the harsh environments of both Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io.
Moon missions: Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion capsule
NASA’s Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule – both seen as centerpieces in the effort to return Americans to the moon – may have their days numbered.
The SLS and Orion, which have both launched just once on an uncrewed mission in 2022 from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, are due to play a role in NASA’s lunar ambitions under the Artemis campaign. But Trump seeks to phase out both the SLS and the Orion after just two more missions.
That means Artemis II astronauts would still ride an Orion capsule around the moon following liftoff using the SLS rocket as early as 2026. NASA’s plans also call for Artemis III astronauts aboard the Orion capsule to board a SpaceX Starship while in orbit for a ride to the moon’s surface as early as 2027.
Venus missions: DAVINCI and VERITAS
Four years ago, NASA selected two missions to Venus under its Discovery program, focused on developing spaceflights to study our solar system.
DAVINCI is a planned mission managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland for an orbiter and atmospheric descent probe to reach Venus. Its counterpart, VERITAS, is another upcoming mission to map the surface of the planet in high resolution that would be managed from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
Both spacecraft would have been the first NASA vehicles to explore Venus since the 1990s.
Planetary defense: OSIRIS-APEX
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx, which gathered and returned a sample of asteroid Bennu in September 2023, had been renamed OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer (OSIRIS-APEX) and sent on a path that would allow it to meet up with an infamous asteroid in 2029.
That asteroid is name Apophis, and it initially posed a sizable threat to Earth when it was first discovered in 2004 before scientists eventually calculated that its trajectory was harmless. OSIRIS-APEX was meant to spend 18 months mapping the asteroid’s surface and analyzing its chemical makeup during a rendezvous with Apophis in June 2029 after the asteroid has a close encounter with Earth.
Scientists had considered the mission an invaluable endeavor to allow NASA and other space agency’s to build up planetary defense capabilities if a space rock ever posed a threat.
Space telescope: Chandra X-Ray Observatory
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has spent more than 25 years detecting exotic environments in the cosmos to help astronomers understand the structure and evolution of the universe. The space telescope, which launched in 1999 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, continues to provide data allowing scientists to make new cosmic discoveries.
While the observatory is targeted under Trump’s budget proposal, other famous space telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope would remain in operation.
Contributing: Brooke Edwards, Rick Neale, USA TODAY Network
Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump’s budget targets dozens of NASA space missions: Here’s a look
