Earlier this month, the White House released its fiscal year (FY) 2027 federal budget request, which slashes NASA's total budget by 23% and its science funding by 47%.
Trump proposed the same basic reductions for FY 2026 but was denied by Congress, which has the power of the purse in Washington. And it looks like history will repeat itself this year.
The U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing about the NASA budget on Wednesday (April 22) that featured agency chief Jared Isaacman as its star witness.
During the event, representatives from both sides of the aisle voiced concerns about the proposed cuts and signaled an intent to reject them again.
"Both the president and Congress have provided explicit direction for NASA to undertake a range of activities, from exploration and science to aeronautics research. We must ensure that NASA is funded at a level that allows it to pursue those missions," Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), who chairs the committee, said during the hearing.
"I simply do not believe that this budget proposal is capable of supporting what President Trump himself has directed the agency to accomplish over the course of his two terms, nor what Congress has directed by law," he added.
Babin stressed that he's a fiscal conservative and is worried about the national debt (which currently stands at nearly $39 trillion). But pinching pennies on NASA doesn't make sense, he argued, given that the United States is facing increased competition in the final frontier from China.
China aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030, Babin pointed out, and operates a space station in low Earth orbit that will likely keep running long after the International Space Station is retired. The nation is also launching increasingly complex and ambitious robotic science missions.
"We must ask whether this proposed budget maintains United States civil and commercial space dominance, or if we risk ceding that leadership to our adversary, China," Babin said. "Only through Congress, our commercial space sector and the administration working together can we ensure continued U.S. leadership in space."
Source: www.space.com
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