Key Takeaways:
- The White House proposed a 24% budget cut to NASA for fiscal year 2026, a significant departure from historical precedent, contrasting with bipartisan Congressional efforts to maintain funding near the previous year's level of approximately $24.9 billion.
- A looming government shutdown necessitates a short-term funding solution (continuing resolution or CR). The proposed "clean" CR, lacking specific protections, risks allowing the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to unilaterally impose the White House's proposed cuts, including a 47% reduction to NASA's science programs.
- Democrats introduced a counter-proposal including explicit language to protect ongoing NASA missions from OMB-imposed cuts, highlighting a bipartisan effort to amend any CR to prevent the drastic reduction of NASA's science funding.
- Three potential paths exist: a "clean" CR enabling OMB cuts, a full-year CR maintaining current funding but creating uncertainty, or an omnibus spending bill potentially reflecting the bipartisan consensus supporting robust NASA funding. The conflict highlights contrasting priorities between the administration's focus on human spaceflight (evidenced by supplementary Artemis funding) and the proposed cuts to NASA's science programs.
The months-long drama over NASA’s fiscal year 2026 budget has entered a critical new phase, with a looming government shutdown forcing a high-stakes confrontation over the agency’s future.
The central conflict pits the White House’s proposed 24 percent cut to NASA against bipartisan congressional efforts to maintain funding. Now, with competing stopgap funding measures on the table, a growing chorus of lawmakers and advocates is pushing for a special provision to protect NASA, fearing the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will unilaterally impose the deep cuts — including a 47 percent reduction to the agency’s science programs — on Oct. 1.
“Without inclusion of an anomaly providing guidance on the NASA budget,” House of Representatives members wrote in a letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders, “OMB has pledged to apply its proposed FY 2026 cuts as soon as October 1st. That would result in an unprecedented, single-year cut to NASA, particularly NASA’s space science activities, resulting in irreversible impacts on America’s space leadership and capabilities that ignore congressional intent.”
The path to conflict
The current standoff is the culmination of a lengthy annual budget process. It began months ago when NASA submitted its own budget proposal to the White House OMB, the agency responsible for implementing the president’s policy agenda. Through a series of negotiations, the OMB adjusted NASA’s request to align with the administration’s priorities, resulting in the President’s Budget Request (PBR) being sent to Congress.
This year’s PBR proposed a historic 24 percent cut to the agency, a stark anomaly from decades of precedent. While the PBR is only a proposal, it has historically served as a strong indicator of NASA’s final funding; according to an analysis by The Planetary Society, Congress has never cut NASA’s budget by more than 11 percent or increased it by more than 9 percent relative to the PBR, except for the aftermath of the Challenger disaster.
This historical alignment makes the FY26 proposal a significant departure from the norm. The ultimate constitutional power to fund the government rests with Congress, which signaled its strong disagreement with the administration’s plan. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees — specifically their subcommittees on Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) — both advanced full-year funding bills that reject the White House’s cuts. Their proposals maintain funding near the roughly $24.9 billion level enacted in previous years and are now awaiting votes on the House and Senate floors.
RELATED: Visualizing what’s at stake in the proposed 2026 NASA budget
A ‘clean’ stopgap creates a new crisis
With the Oct. 1 deadline to fund the government looming, Tom Cole (R-OK), House Appropriations Committee Chairman, released a short-term solution: the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2026. The bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), is designed to keep the government open through Nov. 21, 2025, by continuing funding for federal agencies at the previous year’s rate. Federal agencies are currently operating under a similar year-long CR, meaning they are still funded at fiscal 2024 levels.
Cole described the bill as a “clean, short-term funding extension” intended to prevent a shutdown. In this context, “clean” means the bill is free of major policy changes or special funding provisions and is intended only to extend current funding levels. However, its “clean” nature is the source of the new crisis, as it lacks the explicit directive — or “anomaly” — that NASA’s supporters say is necessary to prevent the OMB from imposing the PBR’s deep cuts. During a briefing on Wednesday, Jack Kiraly, director of government relations for The Planetary Society, stressed that the bill should be seen as just an initial proposal. “It is the opening salvo of what will be a very contentious two weeks, as we careen towards that Sept. 30 deadline for the fiscal year,” Kiraly said.
Democrats counter with NASA protections
In a significant development, Democratic appropriators introduced a counterproposal to the CR on Wednesday. The bill, from Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), includes the specific protective language that advocates have been requesting. Section 123 of the bill states that “any [NASA] mission in operation, including extended operations, or under development or formulation … shall be continued in such operations, development, or formulation.”
This provision would limit the OMB’s ability to enact the proposed cancellations. While the bill is unlikely to pass as-is, its introduction formally places the protection of NASA science on the negotiating table. “This new bill includes a provision that … would, in effect, curtail OMB’s ability to enact their cuts and mission cancellations during the CR,” Kiraly said in an email update to attendees, including Astronomy, the day after the briefing. “The inclusion of this section shows that NASA Science is a priority for Congress.”
The bipartisan push for an anomaly
The Democratic counterproposal builds on a bipartisan effort already underway. A group of lawmakers led by Reps. Judy Chu (D-CA) and Don Bacon (R-NE) has been pushing to amend any CR to protect the agency. They argue that allowing the OMB to implement cuts, even temporarily, would be “devastating,” wasting billions in taxpayer investment by terminating almost 20 active space science missions and ultimately “surrender[ing] space leadership to China.”
Their call has been amplified by a coalition of 15 science, education, labor, and space advocacy organizations led by The Planetary Society. The group’s letter highlights the disproportionate impact the proposed budget would have on research, warning that without protection, the cuts to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate would lead to the elimination of more than 40 NASA science projects, including 19 active missions.
“Congress has already made its intent clear: It rejects these reckless cuts and supports continued investment in NASA science,” said Kiraly in a press release. But “without language in the CR, OMB could override that intent, shutting down missions mid-stream, wasting taxpayer dollars, and undermining U.S. leadership in space exploration. Congress must act now to prevent irreversible harm.”
Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society’s chief of space policy, emphasized that the request is about preservation, not new money. “This is simply a directive to prevent un-strategic and wasteful mission terminations rejected by Congress,” Dreier stated.
Three potential paths forward
In Wednesday’s briefing, The Planetary Society outlined three potential legislative paths that could determine NASA’s fate in the coming months. The first, and most immediate danger, is the passage of a “clean” CR like the one currently proposed. In this scenario, the temporary funding bill is approved without any protective language for NASA, allowing the OMB to begin implementing the PBR’s deep cuts and start the process of shutting down missions.
The danger, as Dreier explained, lies not in the top-line funding number but in how the OMB can control the rate of spending. “You have a potential situation where these dramatic cuts could potentially functionally be implied during a short-term stopgap period. Not because on paper … you have the same amount of money, but because they are going to restrict again that flow of money,” Dreier said.
A second possibility is a full-year CR. If Congress remains deadlocked on full-year appropriations, it could opt to extend the current flat funding for the rest of the fiscal year. While this would avoid the immediate cuts of the PBR, The Planetary Society warned that without specific guardrails, it would create a prolonged state of uncertainty and leave NASA vulnerable to other administrative actions to withhold funds.
The final path is an “omnibus” spending bill. This would occur if, after one or more short-term CRs, congressional leaders reach a deal to combine all the annual spending bills into one large package. Kiraly described how this process would ultimately reflect the bipartisan consensus already established in the CJS bills. “Likely, an omnibus will … use those proposals that are currently being considered by the House and Senate as the foundation on which they build a bipartisan consensus around an omnibus funding bill,” he said, resulting, potentially, in “a final spending package that actually results in a stronger NASA that has clear stability and direction, provided by the Congress.”
Human exploration gets a boost
An interesting aside to the annual budget drama reveals the Trump administration’s apparent interest in human exploration over science. In July, President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” a special reconciliation bill that operates outside the normal annual appropriations process. An amendment added by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) provided nearly $10 billion in supplementary, multiyear funding to secure the Artemis program, specifically ensuring the continuation of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft through 2032.
This apparent focus on human spaceflight at the expense of science has led observers to speculate about the origins of the administration’s budget proposal. “The source of this is not the outcome of a considered policy process, but a factional and potentially even somewhat personal image for what NASA should or shouldn’t be expressing itself,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society, in Wednesday’s briefing.
This move highlights a contrast in priorities. While the administration’s own FY26 budget request calls for retiring SLS and Orion and slashing science, this supplementary funding legally mandates the continuation of the human exploration programs. The two potential outcomes are telling: If the OMB imposes the PBR cuts on Oct. 1, NASA would face a catastrophic 47 percent reduction to its science programs while its human exploration directorate receives a nearly $10 billion boost. Conversely, if Congress passes a full-year budget that protects science, NASA would receive both its standard funding and this supplementary Artemis money, fully funding both directorates.
A high-stakes standoff
With the Oct. 1 deadline fast approaching, NASA finds itself at the center of a high-stakes budgetary battle. While lawmakers have shown clear support for the space agency, the immediate challenge is ensuring that a temporary solution to keep the government open doesn’t inadvertently trigger the deep, long-term cuts they have sought to avoid. With Democrats now having placed specific protections for NASA on the negotiating table, the fate of the agency’s science and exploration portfolio rests on whether Congress can find a compromise before the clock runs out.
