NASA science mission saved from Trump budget cuts, but others still in limbo

Another mission the White House wanted to cancel was THEMIS, a pair of spacecraft orbiting the Moon to map the lunar magnetic field. The lead scientist on that mission, Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles, said his team would receive “partial funding” for the 2026 fiscal year.

“That’s good, but in the meantime it means that scientific staff are starved of funding,” Angelopoulos told Ars. “The effect is that the United States is not getting the scientific return it could get from its multibillion-dollar investments in technology.”

To put a number on it, the missions already in space that the Trump administration wants to cancel represent a cumulative investment of $12 billion to design and build, according to the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. An assessment by Ars concluded that operational missions slated for cancellation cost taxpayers less than $300 million a year, or between 1 and 2 percent of NASA’s annual budget.

Defenders of NASA’s science program gathered at the U.S. Capitol this week to highlight the threat. Angelopoulos said the protests from scientists and the public appear to be paying off.

“I view the House’s budget execution as an indication that voter pressure is paying off,” he said. “Unfortunately, the damage is already done. Even if funding is restored, we have already lost people.”

Some scientists worry that the Trump administration will try to withhold funding for some programs, even if Congress provides them with a budget. That would likely spark a fight in court.

Bruce Jakosky, former principal investigator of the MAVEN Mars mission, raised this concern. He said it’s a “positive step” that NASA is now making plans assuming the agency will receive the budget set by the House. But there is a catch.

“Even if the Congressional budget is signed into law, the President has shown no hesitation in not spending the money that has been legally mandated,” Jakosky wrote in an email to Ars. “This means that having a budget is not the end all be all; and having the money distributed to MAVEN’s science and operations team is not the end all be all – only when the money is actually spent can we be assured it will not be recouped.

“This means that uncertainty accompanies us throughout the fiscal year,” he said. “This uncertainty will certainly cause morale problems.”