So long, space travel. The White House plans to terminate billions of dollars’ worth of ongoing and future National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) missions, effectively cutting the world-renowned scientific agency in half. President Donald Trump’s most recent budget proposal to Congress proposes major reductions that would cut NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion, The Washington Postreported Friday. The SMD is responsible for sponsoring research in several fields: earth science, heliophysics, astrophysics, planetary science, and biological and physical sciences. The astrophysics budget would drop from $1.5 billion to $487 million. The planetary science budget would plunge from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. No telescope other than the extant Hubble and Webb telescopes will be funded, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a groundbreaking instrument in the works that would study distant galaxies and faraway planets. Not all hope is lost, however, as the budget draft is only the first step in the process in which Trump sends Congress a 2026 fiscal year budget request. Congress, which has the “power of the purse,” could still rescue NASA. The Daily Beast has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.
