These Are All The NASA Missions That Trump Wants To Cancel

The Trump administration has released its final budget proposal and in response, many have expressed concern that it will stifle American science and halt NASA’s and other agencies' work for decades to come. For NASA in particular, the planned cuts are set to eliminate several important upcoming missions, as well as end missions that are already in orbit or on their way to their targets.

The budget request already indicated the direction in which the cuts might go, and now, the full budget shows that the Trump administration is planning to clip NASA’s wings across all its divisions, cutting 40 “lower priority” missions, as the administration calls them.

In the proposal, the administration claims that it is committed to “strengthening America's leadership in space exploration,” – though that depends on what someone believes “committed” to mean. NASA's budget, for example, will be cut by 25 percent, and the science budget will be cut by 47 percent. NASA's budget has been about half of a percent of the total national budget for several years.

The budget still needs to be approved by Congress, so many have been urging senators and representatives to instead give NASA the funding to remain competitive in space exploration. Here is a list of the missions and plans NASA will lose if the budget is approved in full.

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The Sun

Studying the Sun is fundamental to understanding stars in general, but also to protecting our civilization. Solar storms can create havoc with our technology, and this is why there are many missions focusing on our own yellow star. This includes missions such as ACE, HelioSwarm, Themis, WIND, IBEX, IRIS, Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, GOLD, TIMED, as well as NASA's participation in the EUVST and Hinode missions. Most of these missions are already in space, and some have been so for over a decade.

We are currently studying the Sun like never before, but this might be the peak of solar exploration if all these missions go.

Venus

The 2030s were going to be a new age of exploration for Venus. Not anymore, if the budget is approved. NASA's Venus missions were supposed to be DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy).

DAVINCI is a probe that will plunge through the planet's dense atmosphere, collecting detailed measurements, while VERITAS would be sent to investigate if Venus has or had plate tectonics and establish if there are still active volcanoes on Venus. For good measure, the budget also takes away NASA’s contribution to the European Space Agency’s mission EnVision. The only ever images of the surface of Venus come from Soviet probes, and this might be the case for a long time to come.

Earth 

Seventeen missions that are designed to study our planet have been cancelled. Among them are Terra and Aqua, which study the atmosphere, land, and oceans of our planet and have been doing so across three decades. Upcoming missions like PACE are also on the chopping block, together with involvement in international missions designed to keep our planet safe.

This week, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency shocked people by reportedly not knowing that the US has a hurricane season. The US may be even worse protected by losing upcoming missions such as Landsat NEXT or the Precipitation Measuring Mission, among many others studying the changing climate.

The Moon

The administration claims that its goal is to bring humans back to the Moon and onto Mars, yet in the budget it has cancelled the Lunar Gateway, the space station that was supposed to orbit the Moon, providing a crucial base around the satellite, as well as the Space Launch System and the Orion Spacecraft, aiming to have commercial partners take astronauts to the Moon. Orion has already gone to deep space and around the Moon, while SpaceX’s Starship continues to struggle in tests.

Also proposed to be cancelled is the Lunar Trailblazer mission, launched earlier this year, that would map the lunar water, crucial to establishing a permanent scientific base on the Moon.

Mars

Even under the bombastic claim that humans will soon reach Mars, shared by former Senior Advisor to the President, Elon Musk, the budget cuts missions that have changed what we know about the Red Planet. Contributions to Mars Express and the upcoming Rosalind Franklin rover are set to go. The MAVEN mission, which discovered Mars’s peculiar aurorae, will also be gone, as well as the veteran Mars Odyssey, fundamental in understanding the chemical composition of the planet.

It is also goodbye to the Mars Sample Return, the ambitious mission that aimed to collect samples on Mars and bring them back to Earth for detailed analysis.

The Solar System At Large

The Juno mission around Jupiter is coming to the end of its second extended mission and has provided incredible new views of the king of the planets, the first views in decades of its largest moons, and so much data that it will keep scientists busy for a good while. The administration thinks that’s enough.

New Horizons, the mission that first explored Pluto and Arrokoth, will also be terminated far from the Sun. Closer to Earth, OSIRIS-APEX, strong from delivering the precious samples of asteroid Bennu, was going to meet the dangerous asteroid Apophis. That's still due to happen because it’s already on that orbit, but we won’t be getting the data if Trump's plan is approved.

Exoplanets, The Milky Way, And Beyond

NASA’s contribution to the ARIEL mission to study exoplanets is planned to be cut, along with many others, including those to the dark universe hunter Euclid and the X-ray telescope XRISM. It is a decimation for high-energy studies too, with the veteran Chandra X-ray telescope and the Fermi Gamma-ray telescopes ending, alongside budget cuts for XMM-Newton, NuSTAR, and SphereX. The budget also cuts the contribution to LISA, the European gravitational waves observatory in space.

Not Just NASA

Talking about gravitational waves, the National Science Foundation budget is also set to suffer a serious blow, much like those for the National Institutes of Health and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The proposed NSF budget would turn off one of the two LIGOs, but to do effective scientific research with gravitational waves, you need both of them.

In all, the proposed budget may well see significant economic consequences. Research has shown that in the United States, $1 of investment in innovation produces an average return of $5. The Trump administration proposes cutting at least $36,132,000,000 from science-based agencies and institutions, which could have yielded $180,660,000,000 in returns.