Remember Alf Kuchenbuch’s September 2024 dream about ESA, Frontgrade Gaisler and BrainChip teaming up to “give Rosalind’s ‘children’ a neuromorphic brain for better perception and autonomy”?
Laurent Hili, Sandi Habinc, Sean Hehir, please give Rosalind's "children" a neuromorphic brain for better perception and autonomy! (That is my dream.)
www.linkedin.com
Well, looks as if Mummy Mars Rover may have some major delivery issues - pertaining to her very own components, that is.
Alf Kuchenbuch found the following LinkedIn post insightful, which was written by a German freelance science writer focusing on aerospace topics:
🚀 Die lange Leidensgeschichte des europäischen Mars-Rovers „Rosalind Franklin“ könnte eine neue, unerfreuliche Wendung nehmen – und dieses Mal liegt’s nicht an Russland, sondern an den USA. 👉 Exakt 0 Dollar (in Worten: null) will die Nasa im kommenden Jahr für das Projekt ausgeben – dabei...
www.linkedin.com
Jared Isaacman was days away from being confirmed as NASA administrator, and taking on the largest budget cuts in the agency’s history, when the White House pulled his nomination May 31. (credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls) |
NASA’s future in the balanceby Jeff Foust
Monday, June 2, 2025At the end of last week, the space community was gearing up for more bad news. While there was no formal announcement, NASA was widely expected to release more details about its fiscal year 2026 budget proposal. The White House had released top-level details in a “skinny” budget released in early May (see “Budget cuts and the fraying of international partnerships”, The Space Review, May 12, 2025), but NASA would go into details about how the cuts in the skinny budget would be implemented: which missions and programs would be cancelled or scaled back, and which few lucky ones would be increased.
The release of the detailed budget would help illustrate the magnitude of the reductions to the space community as well as to members of Congress who, in the coming weeks and months will consider, or cast aside, the proposal as they craft appropriations bills. It was also shaping up to be the first major challenge for NASA incoming administrator—until it wasn’t.
Deep cutsNormally NASA budget rollouts are events. In recent years, NASA administrators have given “State of NASA” speeches the day the budget is announced, with a briefing later in the day to discuss what was in, or cut from, the proposal.
This year was different. There was no “State of NASA” speech, no briefing, no press release, and not even a formal advisory in advance. Instead, at about 4 pm EDT on Friday the 30th, NASA posted the documents on its website with zero fanfare.
Looking at the document, one can understand why NASA didn’t want to publicize it. The budget cancelled missions and programs right and left to achieve the $6 billion in cuts from the agency’s 2025 budget of about $24.9 billion.
Those cuts were most visible in science. According to The Planetary Society, 41 individual projects, both standalone missions and contributions to other missions, are slated for termination in the 2026 budget proposal. They range from Mars Sample Return (MSR), the multibillion-dollar program that the skinny budget already disclosed would be canceled, to many ongoing missions in extended phases whose annual budgets are in the low millions of dollars each.
“It’s generally pretty much what we expected,” Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, said in an interview shortly after the release of the budget. That was based on the overall budget reductions for science included in the skinny budget, which slashed science spending by 47% from 2025.
The skinny budget had listed only two missions, MSR and Landsat Next, for termination (Landsat Next, the document said, would be restructured in some way to lower its costs, with work continuing another line item.) The detailed budget showed how far-reaching the proposed cuts were,
Some of the missions slated for cancellation are large, like the Earth System Observatory line of missions, still largely in early phases of development. Also cancelled was the Astrophysics Probe program, also in its early phases now—NASA selected two concepts for further study last year—but which would have a full cost of about $1 billion.
The budget, released almost four years after NASA selected two Venus missions in its latest Discovery program competition, DAVINCI and VERITAS, would cancel them both. It would also cancel NASA’s contribution to EnVision, a European Space Agency mission to Venus launching around the same time.
However, small missions in development also got the axe, like the Compton Spectrometer and Imager as well as Ultraviolet Explorer missions in astrophysics. It also seeks to cancel NASA’s role in ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover mission to Mars, where NASA offered to provide thrusters for the landing platform, radioisotope heating units and a launch to replace components that Roscosmos had provided.
A wide range of missions already operating and in their extended phases would be terminated in the budget. The biggest of them is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which a year ago NASA was considering budget cuts that astronomers warned were tantamount to cancellation. The new budget simply zeroes out the budget for Chandra. The Hubble Space Telescope would continue, but with some modest funding cuts.
The scale of those terminations surprised even Dreier. “I’d say some of the surprises were things like MAVEN, Juno, New Horizons; these really unique and arguably infrastructure-related assets,” he said. MAVEN, a Mars orbiter, is also used as a communications relay. Also terminated in the budget proposal is OSIRIS-APEX, the extension of the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission that will go to the asteroid Apophis just after its close Earth flyby in 2029.
He was also surprised that the budget would effectively end NASA support of plutonium-238 production needed for radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) and heating units. “The argument is that we no longer need a presence in the outer solar system, so we don’t need plutonium any more,” he said.
There was one bit of good news for science in the budget. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which leaked budget documents in April suggested would be terminated, is funded in the budget. However, it does do at a lower level than projected: $156.6 million for fiscal year 2025, versus a projected $376.5 million that NASA said last year the mission would need in 2026 as it worked towards a launch as soon as the fall of 2026.
“NASA is actively evaluating cost-saving strategies and identifying schedule optimization opportunities to enable the mission to proceed with this reduced funding level,” the budget document said. But Dreier noted that the spacecraft is now nearly complete, with most of its overall budget already spent: “Cutting it in half and expecting to save money, that doesn’t make sense.”
Many of the other reductions in the NASA budget had already been telegraphed in the skinny budget: ending SLS and Orion after Artemis 3, cancelling the Gateway, potentially reducing the size of crew on the International Space Station, and slashing many space technology programs.
The skinny budget had hinted at new investments in Mars technology, and the budget does more than $1 billion for projects associated with human Mars exploration. That amount includes $200 million mission for “a near-term entry, descent, and landing demonstration for a human-class Mars lander” and another $200 million for commercial payload deliveries to Mars. The budget documents, though, provide few specifics about those new initiatives: the section on new Mars technology investments is less than a page.
The budget includes $864 million for a new “Commercial Moon to Mars (M2M) Infrastructure and Transportation Program”. That would go towards developing a commercial system to replace SLS/Orion as well as early work on “a space suit appropriate for use by astronauts on the Martian surface.” The program will also fund lunar and Martian relay satellites and be the new home of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, currently hosted by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
With all those cuts come job reductions. A table tucked away in the back of the 462-page budget document notes that NASA has 17,391 civil servants in fiscal year 2025. In fiscal year 2026, that would fall by a third, to 11,853. Some field centers would see even larger cuts: the Goddard Space Flight Center would lose nearly 50% of its civil servant workforce, while the Ames Research Center would lose nearly 40%.
The document, though, says little about those cuts. It makes only passing references to “workforce impacts” and “workforce reshaping efforts” without discussing how they would be implemented.
The budget proposal will likely face strong opposition from Congress. Some members, primarily Democrats, have criticized the budget. “This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), ranking member of the House Science Committee, said in a statement Monday. “Republicans need to join Democrats in fighting for the programs they once supported, and their communities thrive on.”
“We've heard from Republican offices that this is dead on arrival, absolutely deader than dead on arrival,” Dreier said.
Isaacman outFor about 24 hours, the budget proposal appeared to be the first major challenge for NASA’s expected next administrator, Jared Isaacman. Just before the Memorial Day holiday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination, a procedural move intended to set up a vote on the nomination this week. By the end of this week, most expected Isaacman to be sworn in.
He would have faced strong questions about how much he supported this budget proposal, which would now be his. He had deflected questions about potential budget cuts during his confirmation process, stating that he was not involved in its development, but noted that a potential cut of neatly 50% to NASA science “does not appear to be an optimal outcome.” Did he still believe that now that he was running the agency and handed a budget with such a massive cut?
Within hours, the White House confirmed that Isaacman was out. “It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston said in a statement.
That statement, though, gave no reason for why the White House was withdrawing the nomination, and even left open the chance that Isaacman had decided to withdraw.
Trump provided a few more details later Saturday evening. “After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA. I will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned, and put America First in Space,” he stated.
Those “prior associations” were not identified, but appear to be a reference to Isaacman’s past donations to Democratic candidates and party offices. Those donations, though, were publicly known for months, which led to speculation again that the decision was linked to fraying ties between Trump and Musk, as the latter exited his formal role in the administration just a day earlier.
Whatever the reason, the decision leaves NASA without a permanent leader just as it faces the steepest budget cuts in its history. That has demoralized the agency’s workforce and sent shock waves of concern through the rest of the space community.
Isaacman “ran into the kind of politics that is damaging our country. Republicans and Democrats supported him as the right guy at the right time for the top job at NASA, but it wasn’t enough,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), himself a former astronaut, in a post Monday. “It’s incredibly frustrating that this administration did this to him and his family but I know he’s not done yet and he has a lot left to offer space exploration and our nation.”
Isaacman himself took the high road in his own online comments about the withdrawal, saying the six months since Trump announced his intent to nominate Isaacman “have been enlightening and, honestly, a bit thrilling.” He added, “I’ll always be grateful for this opportunity and cheering on our President and NASA as they lead us on the greatest adventure in human history.”
But right now, few other people are cheering on NASA as the one-two punch of the budget cuts and withdrawn nomination create a dark mood unlike any seen at NASA outside of spaceflight tragedies. The agency’s future is at stake as it enters uncharted fiscal waters with no one at the helm.
Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. |
“They always say [NASA budgets are] dead on arrival—this is extra dead.”
payloadspace.com
Trump Ditches Isaacman Amid Record NASA Cuts
By
Tim FernholzJune 2, 2025
All this and more. Image: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
President Donald Trump abandoned Jared Isaacman, his nominee for NASA administrator, a day after proposing record cuts to the agency that could leave it with budget levels last seen before US astronauts first reached space, after adjusting for inflation.
The chaotic weekend began with the Friday release of the full President’s Budget Request, without the typical briefing for journalists by agency leaders. On Saturday, Semafor
broke the news that Trump would pull his nomination of Isaacman—the software entrepreneur and private space explorer chosen to lead NASA in December, who was poised to get a vote as soon as this week.
“It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement.
Bad alignment? It wasn’t a dispute over the cuts, according to
the New York Times: Isaacman, whose nomination was driven by his relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, was the victim of administration in-fighting. With Musk purporting to leave government service (the truth
isn’t so clear), Musk’s internal rivals reportedly told Trump about Isaacman’s past donations to Democratic politicians, leading the capricious president to reject him.
Isaacman has also given money to Republican candidates (including Trump himself), but he is clearly more of a moderate than a MAGA animal. Isaacman thanked Trump and wished NASA well in
a statement on social media.
Next in line: Another nomination process will leave NASA rudderless even longer and without a voice in the budget process. Ars Technica
reports that one name under discussion is retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Kwast. Kwast is co-founder and CEO of SpaceBilt, served as CEO of Skycorp, and has
expressed concern about China reaching the Moon before the US returns.
Devastating cuts: As the skinny budget previewed, Trump took an ax to the world’s premier space agency. The
plan envisions firing more than 5,000 NASA employees and canceling 41 scientific projects—including 19 active missions, such as Juno, Maven, and OSIRIS-APEX.
Casey Dreier, the policy chief at the Planetary Society, estimates that $12B of prior NASA spending will be stranded by the decisions—about twice what is being cut from the budget. The White House also proposed to run the ISS with a skeleton crew for the next four years, limiting the return on more than $100B of US investment on the orbital platform.
Mainly, though, there is a lot of handwaving about what will replace Artemis—whose major elements are set to sunset after the planned Artemis III Moon landing no earlier than 2028—and a blank space for many US allies across the world who thought they were investing time and political capital in an enduring lunar return.
Instant reaction:
- “They always say it’s dead on arrival—this is extra dead,” Dreier said.
- “My sense is that this budget is dead on arrival in Congress,” Rep. George Whitesides (D-CA) told Payload.
- Key Texas Republicans—including Rep. Brian Babin and Sen. Ted Cruz, whose Houston constituents would play a major role in the lunar return—have yet to comment publicly on the proposal.
Beyond policy disagreements, senators aren’t going to be happy that all their work vetting Isaacman—who at least won the confidence of the committee overseeing NASA—went to waste.
Silver linings: Some programs thought to be under threat survived, including the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan, and the NEO Surveyor. Still, cuts will have an impact—Roman will be delayed at least another year.
Martian mess: The White House cited Trump’s “bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars” in its statement withdrawing Isaacman’s nomination, but its Martian priorities don’t quite line up.
The budget cancels MAVEN, a satellite already acting as a comms relay at Mars, in favor of a yet-to-be-designed commercial comms relay project. It also halts production of Plutonium-238, a key material for the systems that drive Martian missions, which was only
recently resumed to reduce dependence on Russia. The budget also cancels Mars Sample Return, which was expected to conduct more scientific research concerning the makeup of the planet Trump hopes to reach.
The rest of the new $1B+ Mars exploration budget is here:
- $350M for Mars tech;
- $200M for payload delivery to Mars ;
- $200M “to conduct a near-term entry, descent, and landing demonstration for a human-class Mars lander”;
- $120M for Mars robotic-exploration missions;
- $80M for comms relay around Mars;
- $80M for computers, comms development, and surface power;
- $50M for Mars suits;
- $50M to mature transport to and from the surface.
Many of these efforts are tailored to support SpaceX’s exploration agenda, but they may struggle to find backers if Musk is no longer in the driver’s seat for US space policy.
COTS for everywhere: The budget proposes using commercial transportation to reach the Moon and Mars, following the cancellation of SLS and Orion. It’s a hard pivot from NASA’s previous insistence on preventing a decade-long (or more) capability gap like the one seen when the Space Shuttle retired. Neither SpaceX’s Starship nor Blue Origin’s New Glenn, two often-mooted deep space rocket replacements, appear like they’ll be ready for prime time by the end of 2028.
Too bad for the little guys: NASA SBIR and STTR funding will be cut by $50M next year, slowing an important source of funding for startups developing advanced technology.
PA-OH No: This may be of parochial concern to your author, but: The budget also cuts public affairs budgets at every NASA center, with only headquarters expected to have a communications office. That will make it harder, not easier, for taxpayers to figure out what their space exploration money is spent on—and for the space agency to communicate why its work is critical to humanity.
Next up: Congress seems likely to enact its own NASA budget, which could tee up another fight with the White House: Russ Vought, the OMB head whose dislike of NASA has driven the dramatic cuts to the agency, said on Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union that the administration could still ignore Congress’ spending priorities through a process called “impoundment” that was made illegal in 1974.
as it has gone really quite since the AGM.
GO GO GO — see you at the all-time high!
#AkidaInsideOrNotWhoCares
#SellingIsForTourists
#MoonMissionIncoming
#ManifestingAtLeast50Likes
