NASA's future in question as budget cuts threaten key missions

The White House's 2027 budget plan proposes slashing NASA's science funding by nearly half, putting over 50 missions at risk. This includes active spacecraft like Juno, which has studied Jupiter for nearly ten years, and New Horizons, which explored Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Even missions that just delivered asteroid samples back to Earth are now facing uncertainty under this proposal. Future exploration also takes a hit. Two planned Venus missions, DAVINCI and VERITAS, could disappear entirely. NASA's involvement in the European Mars rover is also on the chopping block, along with several international collaborations like the LISA gravitational wave detector and the ATHENA X-ray observatory. Some of these projects have been decades in the making, like the Chandra X-ray Observatory, which has been scanning the cosmos for 25 years.Earth science isn't spared either. Satellites tracking tropical storms and measuring greenhouse gases could be grounded. The CYGNSS constellation, which helps predict hurricanes, and the TROPICS satellites, which monitor storm intensity, are both on the list. Even long-running climate monitors like OCO-2 and OCO-3, which track carbon dioxide levels, are at risk. The budget proposal doesn't spell out which missions will be canceled—it just sets the stage for potential losses. Past experience shows Congress often rejects extreme cuts. Last year, despite similar proposed cuts, lawmakers restored funding, saving most missions. But this year's proposal is even more drastic, leaving NASA's future projects hanging in the balance.