US lawmakers fire back a response to Trump's NASA cuts

Big expensive Moon rockets = good. Science = yeah, whatever

While US President Donald Trump and his former best pal, Elon Musk, were having a very public spat, the US Senate fired back with its response to NASA's proposed budget cuts. Big rockets = good. Science = still bad.

The detailed proposal from Trump's government slashed NASA's budget, cancelled programs such as the Gateway space station, and terminated NASA's Moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), after Artemis III.

It also did away with almost half of the US space agency's science budget and cancelled the Mars Sample Return mission once and for all.

However, the proposal was just that – a proposal. The US President has made a request, and it is up to Congress to approve it or make changes. The political fault lines became clear at the end of last week as US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released the Budget Reconciliation Text.

The document gives an insight into lawmakers' thinking; it isn't good news for science fans. Things look much rosier for commercial outfits on the SLS payroll, though.

Almost $10 billion is to be made available (until September 30, 2032), of which $4.1 billion is to be spent on the SLS for Artemis IV and V. $2.6 billion is to go on the Gateway – a space station orbiting the Moon – and $700 million on the commercial procurement of a Mars telecommunication orbiter.

While the Mars orbiter is to be "capable of providing robust, continuous communications for a Mars sample return mission," the text stops short of restoring the Mars Sample Return mission.

There is precious little in the text about restoring funding for the science missions that would be cancelled under Trump's request. This gives us a clue regarding lawmakers' priorities on at least one side of the political divide: big rockets = good. Science = yeah, whatever.

The text also includes an additional $1.25 billion for the International Space Station (ISS), funding for which was reduced in the original request, and $1 billion for "infrastructure improvements at the manned [sic] spaceflight centers of the administration."

The lack of science funding in the text is less than ideal, and suggests that Trump's cuts to NASA's science projects are unlikely to be resisted. Instead, lawmakers appear more interested in the Moon and keeping cash flowing to projects like the SLS. ®