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.
