Trump reorient NASA to Musk’s dream from touring to Mars and applies the chainsaw to the house station | Science | EUROtoday

Although Elon Musk is saying goodbye to his position within the White House, to give attention to his companies, the primary budgets of Trump’s second mandate present that the tune between them stays intact, regarding the plans for NASA. In a proposal that confirms the rumors that the US president desires to eradicate nearly 50% the expense in science of the house company, not the whole lot is cuts: there’s additionally a brand new sport of 1,000 million {dollars} destined for the human exploration of Mars, which is Musk’s nice dream and the final word cause why he based his aerospace firm, Spacex.

After the research research by the Doge – the division created by Elon Musk to advise the US president – the Trump administration has raised a complete funds for NASA of 18.8 billion {dollars} in 2026. That would imply a robust fall of just about 25% with respect to the 24,900 million 2025, which has alarmed the specialists. “The White House has proposed NASA’s greatest annual budget cut in its history,” mentioned Casey Dreier, head of house coverage of the planetary society. This non -profit group, which promotes the scientific exploration of house, has requested the US Congress to strongly reject Trump’s proposal as a result of “it is a step back in US leadership in science, exploration and innovation in space.”

As NASA’s budgets and priorities are established by Congress, which may reject and modify the proposals of the US president, the deep cuts and modifications that Trump poses aren’t ultimate. However, they’re the primary clear indication of what are the plans of your administration for the house company. They are already actual proposals, past exalted speeches through which they’ve dedicated to ship “American astronauts to plant bars and stars [en referencia a la bandera de EE UU] on the planet Mars ”, one thing that’s materially unattainable to occur throughout his mandate.

What is feasible, and that’s what its budgets point out, is to re -do NASA to focus it on human house exploration. Trump asks that nearly half of his bills for 2026 are allotted to finance astronaut journeys to the moon (7,000 million {dollars}) and Mars (1,000 million). The company would thus depart from its present line through which the precedence is scientific analysis, carried out by each astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) and by the telescopes and robotic probes that journey by means of the Solar System. Although the cuts are widespread in nearly all areas of the US house company, they particularly have an effect on the scientific missions made by robots.

Astronauts, extra protagonists

This is the case of the mission to deliver again the rocks of Mars collected lately by the Róver Perseverance “That arrived in Mars in February 2021. Given the increase and accumulated delays, Trump’s new budget directly proposes to cancel the mission of return of Martian samples. NASA would renounce to compete with China, which does plan to send a robot to bring Rocas de Mars in 2031, and entrusts that task to the first astronauts traveling to the red planet.

If the US Congress approves this proposal – which cuts 2,265 million dollars in space scientific missions and others 1,161 million in land science research – will also be canceled both the use of satellites to monitor the terrestrial climate and studies to develop a greener aviation. In addition, the agency would stop investing 143 million annually in promoting vocations of scientists, technologists and engineers. “NASA will inspire the next generation of explorers through exciting and ambitious space missions, not through the Stem programs subsidy wokeswhich prioritize some groups of students on others and have had a minimum impact on the staff of the aerospace sector, ”explains the budget document presented by the White House.

Trump and Musk’s budget chainsaw also reaches the ISS, which is intended to allocate 508 million dollars less in 2026. That would mean reducing the number of crew that permanently inhabit the space station and reduce its scientific research capacity, “focusing it on essential efforts for the exploration packages of the Moon and Mars.” The plan is to continue working on a transition that replaces ISS with several private stations for scientific research and prepare the safe exorbitation of the station, to sink it into the ocean from 2030; NASA already commissioned that task to the company Spacex by Elon Musk in 2024.

First the moon, then Mars

The new Trump administration has shown for the first time its commitment to the Artemis program to return to the Moon, which was promoted in 2017 by the first Trump administration. The budget proposal makes explicit that “the precedence is to return to the moon earlier than China manages to reach and put an American in Mars.”

With that objective, the proposal is to keep the missions Artemis 2 y Artemis 3 —Previsions for 2026 and 2027 – but from there cancel the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, to resort to private spacecraft. “The funds funds a program to exchange SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with extra worthwhile business programs that will assist extra bold posterior lunar missions,” details the White House document, which also proposes to cancel the Lunar Gateway Space Station, designed by NASA together with the European that and other space agencies.

The great beneficiaries of this change would be the billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. They are the main candidates to take the lucrative contracts that NASA awarded if new games are finally opened to the Moon and Mars. Its space companies – Spacex and Blue Origin, respectively – are the ones that are most advanced in the manufacture of reusable space megacohetes and capable of sending ships with humans to the lunar surface. Musk intends to even point to the red planet. However, its starship is currently stagnant in the development phase after several recent explosions, it has never managed to leave until reaching a land orbit and there is not even a forecast of what year it could be operational. The New Glenn de Bezos has already completed its first orbital flight, but has no date to start trying its lunar landing module.

Therefore, Trump’s candidate to direct NASA, also billionaire Jared Isaacman, acknowledged on April 9 during his exam before the US Senate that the current system of the Artemis program – with the NASA SLS and Orion vehicles – is the fastest way that the US returns to the moon and gown to China in that new space race. Pressing by both Republicans and Democrats, Isaacman changed his initial speech that the priority would be Mars and admitted that before you have to return to the moon. However, he said that once that goal is achieved, “NASA ought to transfer away from the competitors with the non-public sector and, as a substitute, focus its firstclass expertise and infrastructure on the event of the following era of exploration applied sciences (together with nuclear spacecraft) as a subsequent logical step.”

One last life for SLS and Orion

Isaacman had always been very critical of the current design of the Artemis program, which he put in 2024 as an example of NASA’s extra cost and inefficiency problems. Last month, before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Commission of the Senate, it collided with the legislators of States in which the manufacture of SLS and Orion supports tens of thousands of families. Once those senators managed to start a written commitment in the short term with that system to travel to the Moon, on April 30 they voted in favor of their candidacy.

Thus, everything indicates that Isaacman will finally end up leading NASA. It only remains that the full Senate’s full ratify its appointment, in a vote that is expected to be held in the coming weeks. The path of the new budgets of the space agency will be longer. After the first draft, presented last Friday, the detailed proposal of the White House will arrive at the end of the month. And it is the US Congress that will write the final budget and vote after the summer. Meanwhile, Trump plan to cancel SLS after the mission Artemis 3 Take the first astronauts of the 21st century to the moon is just that, an intention.

The solely factor that’s agency is Trump’s will to reorient NASA. It goals to show it right into a manned house journey company, that opens the best way to the moon and Mars, so that personal firms corresponding to Elon Musk commercially exploit the advantages of opening these new borders for humanity.