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Who will bring Mars Sample to Earth first?
A draft of the White House’s budget proposal sent to NASA April 10 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would cut about 20% from the agency’s overall spending levels but reduce spending for the agency’s science programs by nearly 50%.
The document, known as a passback, is not publicly released but is sent to agencies like NASA to allow them to make final appeals before the formal rollout of the budget proposal. Ars Technica first reported on the passback.
According to sources familiar with the details of the passback, the budget would reduce NASA’s topline, or overall, budget to about $20 billion. NASA received about $25 billion for fiscal year 2025 in a continuing resolution (CR) that kept it and other agencies at 2024 spending levels.
That CR sets funding for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at about $7.3 billion. However, the passback would provide just $3.9 billion for the directorate in 2026, a cut of nearly 50% from 2025.
The biggest hit would be to NASA’s astrophysics division, which received about $1.5 billion in 2024 (NASA has not completed allocations to its science divisions for 2025 based on the levels in the continuing resolution) but would get less than $500 million in 2026. It would propose canceling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which had been on budget and schedule for a launch in late 2026.
Earth science would be cut by a little more than 50% to just over $1 billion, while heliophysics would see a nearly 50% cut to about $450 million.
The budget would provide $1.9 billion for planetary science, about a third less than what it received in 2024. It would, though, cancel the Mars Sample Return program, which has suffered cost and schedule overruns that led to an agency decision in January to study two alternative approaches to it. It would also cancel DAVINCI, a Venus mission selected as part of the Discovery program nearly four years ago.
Meanwhile, PRC is in full commitment to bring back Mars samples by 2030 with CCP's determination to gradually undermine US dominance in space.
There's still chance that US will win the Mars sample return race if SpaceX starship can roll back to the pad as quickly as Elon Musk expects.
DENVER — The White House is proposing steep cuts in NASA’s science program that, if implemented, would cancel several major missions, contradicting claims by the administration’s nominee to lead the agency.
A draft of the White House’s budget proposal sent to NASA April 10 by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would cut about 20% from the agency’s overall spending levels but reduce spending for the agency’s science programs by nearly 50%.
The document, known as a passback, is not publicly released but is sent to agencies like NASA to allow them to make final appeals before the formal rollout of the budget proposal. Ars Technica first reported on the passback.
According to sources familiar with the details of the passback, the budget would reduce NASA’s topline, or overall, budget to about $20 billion. NASA received about $25 billion for fiscal year 2025 in a continuing resolution (CR) that kept it and other agencies at 2024 spending levels.
That CR sets funding for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at about $7.3 billion. However, the passback would provide just $3.9 billion for the directorate in 2026, a cut of nearly 50% from 2025.
The biggest hit would be to NASA’s astrophysics division, which received about $1.5 billion in 2024 (NASA has not completed allocations to its science divisions for 2025 based on the levels in the continuing resolution) but would get less than $500 million in 2026. It would propose canceling the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which had been on budget and schedule for a launch in late 2026.
Earth science would be cut by a little more than 50% to just over $1 billion, while heliophysics would see a nearly 50% cut to about $450 million.
The budget would provide $1.9 billion for planetary science, about a third less than what it received in 2024. It would, though, cancel the Mars Sample Return program, which has suffered cost and schedule overruns that led to an agency decision in January to study two alternative approaches to it. It would also cancel DAVINCI, a Venus mission selected as part of the Discovery program nearly four years ago.
Meanwhile, PRC is in full commitment to bring back Mars samples by 2030 with CCP's determination to gradually undermine US dominance in space.
There's still chance that US will win the Mars sample return race if SpaceX starship can roll back to the pad as quickly as Elon Musk expects.
