How Trump's budget cuts could affect 2 iconic space telescopes: Hubble and James Webb.

The Trump administration has been disrupting the infrastructure of U.S. science over the last few months, its latest blow being a 2026 budget proposal that would cut NASA's science funding in about half. If passed by Congress, this budget would be devastating, scientists say. It would cancel a number of in-development and currently operational missions, lead to significant layoffs and force the shutdown of some astronomy facilities.

This situation therefore begs the question: How might Trump's proposed reductions in U.S. science funding domino down to two of the most high-profile astronomy instruments we have, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)?

The short (and glass-half-full) answer is that Trump's fiscal year 2026 budget request doesn't outright cancel the JWST or the HST. The reductions suggested for these instruments are also rather modest relative to those suggested for other projects (not to mention the missions that'd be deleted from the roster altogether, like the Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft).

Still, the JWST's funding would go down from the $187 million it was allocated in 2024 to $140 million for 2026 if the budget gets passed. Hubble's funding would go down from the $93.3 million it had in 2024 to $85 million in 2026. And both of these proposed reductions would certainly affect these cosmic imagers.

Source: www.space.com

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