NASA’s science budget faces another big cut

For the second year in a row, a new budget plan suggests slashing NASA’s science spending by nearly half. If passed, missions studying planets, stars, and Earth’s climate could be delayed or scrapped entirely. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch soon, and missions to Titan and near-Earth asteroids might never get off the ground. While human spaceflight, like the Artemis moon program, gets protected funding, experts warn this imbalance could weaken U. S. leadership in space research. This isn’t the first time such drastic cuts have been proposed. Last year’s plan met stiff opposition, with Congress rejecting deep reductions and preserving science funding instead. Yet here we are again, facing nearly identical proposals. Advocates argue these cuts would reverse years of progress, pushing science budgets back to levels not seen since the 1960s. The Planetary Society calls it a threat to America’s role in global space exploration.

Meanwhile, NASA’s Artemis program just hit a major milestone, launching astronauts around the moon for the first time in over 50 years. Some see this as a sign the agency is prioritizing human missions over science. But critics ask: At what cost? Cancelling robot-led missions could stall breakthroughs in climate science, planetary protection, and our understanding of the universe. Congress has the final say, and past reactions suggest they’re unlikely to approve extreme cuts. A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently pushed for billions more in science funding. Still, the repeated proposals raise questions about long-term vision—and whether some decisions are driven more by politics than science.