The Trump administration has floated a plan to trim about $6 billion from the budget of NASA, while allocating $1 billion of remaining funds to Mars-focused initiatives, aligning with an ambition long held by Elon Musk and his rocket maker SpaceX.
A copy of the discretionary budget posted to the NASA website on Friday said that the change focuses NASA’s funding on “beating China back to the Moon and on putting the first human on Mars.”
NASA also said it will need to “streamline” its workforce, information technology services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities, and terminate multiple “unaffordable” missions, while reducing scientific missions for the sake of “fiscal responsibility.”
Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said in an agency-wide email on Friday that the proposed lean budget, which would cut about 25% of the space agency’s funding, “reflects the administration’s support for our mission and sets the stage for our next great achievements.”
Petro urged NASA employees to “persevere, stay resilient, and lean into the discipline it takes to do things that have never been done before — especially in a constrained environment,” according to the memo, which was obtained by CNBC. She acknowledged the budget would “require tough choices,” and that some of NASA’s “activities will wind down.”
The document on NASA’s website said it’s allocating more than $7 billion for moon exploration and “introducing $1 billion in new investments for Mars-focused programs.”
SpaceX, which is already among the largest NASA and Department of Defense contractors, has long sought to launch a manned mission to Mars. The company says on its website that its massive Starship rocket is designed to “carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.”
Musk, who is the founder and CEO of SpaceX, has a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, leading an effort to slash the size, spending and capacity of the federal government, and influencing regulatory changes through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk, who frequently makes aggressive and incorrect projections for his companies, said in 2020 that he was “highly confident” that SpaceX would land humans on Mars by 2026.
Petro highlighted in her memo that under the discretionary budget, NASA would retire the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, the Orion spacecraft and Gateway programs.
It would also put an end to its green aviation spending and to its Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program, which sought to use rockets and robotic systems to “collect and send samples of Martian rocks, soils and atmosphere back to Earth for detailed chemical and physical analysis,” according to a website for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Some of the biggest reductions at NASA, should the budget get approved, would hit the space agency’s space science, Earth science and mission support divisions.
Petro didn’t name any specific aerospace and defense contractors in her agency-wide email. However SpaceX, ULA and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are positioned to continue to conduct launches in the absence of the SLS. Boeing is currently the prime contractor leading the SLS program.
“This is far from the first time NASA has been asked to adapt, and your ability to deliver, even under pressure, is what sets NASA apart,” she wrote.
President Trump’s nominee to lead NASA, tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, still has to be approved by the U.S. Senate. His nomination was advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday.
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