﻿I have to be honest with you… I might stop making videos about NASA.
Not because there’s not much left to discover in space,
nor because I’ve lost interest — but because it might be facing the
biggest budget cut in its history. Trump’s new plan has been dubbed
an “extinction-level event”. A third of the staff laid off,
41 missions from Venus to Pluto cancelled, and programs that took decades to build and
billions to launch, gone overnight. While the administration claims it’s
about taxpayer efficiency and staying one step ahead of China,
they’re gutting the very science that made America a space leader to begin with.
And the cost is higher than we imagined. This move could break the international
space community’s trust in the US, and open a power vacuum which might
be filled by for-profit commercial interests and military contracts.
And once the budget is rolled back, even a new administration will find
it next to impossible to undo the damage — setting open and free science back by decades.
Where does NASA go from here?
I'm Alex McColgan, and you're watching Astrum. Join me today as we uncover the
impact of the proposed budget cuts, the private space companies gearing up to fill in,
and what it all means for the future of space exploration.
Since its founding in 1958, NASA has stood at the forefront of space exploration.
They landed the first humans on the Moon, sent rovers to Mars,
and spearheaded the International Space Station — the largest scientific
collaboration in human history. It's a legacy built on courage and innovation,
standing as a beacon of inspiration for millions across the globe.
But in May 2025, the current administration outlined NASA’s new proposed budget for 2026.
It slashes the agency’s funding by about 25% — the biggest cut ever proposed.
If passed, NASA’s funding would drop from $24.8 billion down to just $18.8 billion.
Adjusted for inflation, that’s the lowest budget the space agency has been allocated since 1961.
The Trump administration states their new budget ensures taxpayer dollars will be used
as efficiently as possible to fulfill their goals of getting to the moon before China, and putting
an American on Mars. More than $7 billion has been allocated just to lunar exploration projects, with
an extra $1 billion investment for Mars-focused programs, but duplicate efforts and “financially
unsustainable” programs will be cut and replaced by commercial solutions where possible.
However, when you take a closer look at the details, the picture gets a whole lot uglier.
Under the new proposal, every single NASA department, except Human Space Exploration,
would lose a significant amount of funding. The Science Mission Directorate will suffer the most,
facing a whopping 47% cut. This arm is the lifeblood of NASA. They’re responsible for
planetary probes like the Mars Perseverance Rover, space-based telescopes including Hubble and James
Webb, and near-Earth protection projects like the NEO Surveyor, the infrared telescope set
to launch in 2027, tasked with keeping us safe from threatening asteroids and comets.
But beyond the numbers lies another catastrophic problem. With cuts this deep, NASA faces losing
a third of its workforce — a brain drain of thousands of highly specialized scientists,
engineers, and researchers who've dedicated their careers to US space exploration. Once this talent
leaves for private companies or other industries, getting them back will be virtually impossible.
To make the new budget work, 41 current and future missions would be culled.
One such mission is the New Horizons probe, launched in 2006 to study Pluto and the Kuiper
Belt — asteroids that may hold secrets to the origin and development of our solar system.
It has been travelling through space for almost 20 years, and yet, just like that,
it could be terminated within a matter of months. In addition to New Horizons, 18 other active
projects might be forced to grind to a halt. Among them are the OSIRIS-APEX mission, the first U.S.
mission to collect a sample from an asteroid and currently studying near-Earth asteroids,
the MAVEN mission, helping us understand the evolution of the Martian atmosphere,
the Mars Odyssey, the longest continually-active mission in orbit around another planet,
and the Juno mission, which focuses on the origin and evolution of Jupiter,
by peering through its cloud cover for the first time. Together, these 19 missions represent $12
billion dollars and a combined 180 years of work. If this budget passes, they’d all be scrapped.
You see, once space missions like these are operational, the cost to maintain them
and continue extracting scientific value is negligible. By launch, the bulk of the work
is done, the bulk of the money spent. All that’s left is to reap the fruits of our labour. And yet,
the current administration wants to squander all that time, money, and effort anyway.
Future planned missions on the chopping block include the Davinci and Veritas missions to Venus.
Together, these probes were planned to return to our planetary neighbour for the first time since
1991, to piece together what its atmosphere and geology can tell us about how our evolutionary
paths diverged. Other missions in jeopardy include ESA’s Rosalind Franklin Mars Rover, which relies
on NASA for a launch vehicle, the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope designed to study dark
energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics, and the Helioswarm mission to investigate
fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field and solar wind turbulence for the first time.
Trump’s proposed budget would also slash $508 million from the ISS, forcing reductions in
crew size and onboard research capabilities. A key conference tied to ISS science has already
been cancelled due to the strained financial situation. With less funding, fewer astronauts
and cargo flights will make it up over the next 5 years before the ISS is decommissioned in 2030.
When it was first announced, different news outlets’ take on this were very different.
The left (which reported on this more heavily at the time) called the cuts dire for science,
the economy, and US technological supremacy over China.
Meanwhile, there were platforms on the right that reported that NASA was actually
in favour of the cuts… which, when you compare even
with other right-leaning groups, is clearly not the full picture.
I found this thanks to Ground News, the sponsor of today's video.
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Most recently, the Trump administration has ordered NASA to shut down the only
two satellite missions focused specifically on monitoring greenhouse gases. The Orbiting Carbon
Observatories measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe,
and the data they collect is used by scientists, oil and gas companies,
and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide levels and crop health.
It cost $750 million to develop in the mid-2000s, and an additional $15 million per year to
maintain. Both satellites are in great condition, expected to operate for several more years.
Shutting them down makes little economic or scientific sense. But remember,
this is the same administration that blocked all new offshore wind power development, fast-tracked
permits for new fossil fuel infrastructure, and withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Agreement.
And as if that weren’t devastating enough, these budget cuts will also
deeply hurt NASA's most ambitious, inspiring, and pioneering program in decades — Artemis.
The Apollo program defined not just America, but world history in the 1960s. It was a
decade of break-neck scientific development, progress, and national unity that inspired a
generation of budding scientists, artists, and engineers all over the world. Its final flight,
Apollo 17, put two men on the moon in 1972. No one has stepped on it since.
Now, over half a century later, NASA was planning its comeback. Named after the Greek goddess of
the moon, and Apollo’s twin sister, the Artemis program aims to learn how to live and work on
another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars. In collaboration with commercial and
international partners, NASA hopes to establish the first long-term presence on the moon,
which would one day be used as a jumping off point for longer missions to Mars and back.
But under this new budget, the entire Artemis roadmap beyond 2027 would be
axed. That includes the Orion crew capsule — an upgrade from the Apollo command modules of the
60s — the heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, or SLS, and the Lunar Gateway Station — which has
been the subject of uncertainty for several years before the most recent proposed cuts.
Some argue the SLS is overpriced, coming in at about $2 billion per launch. SpaceX’s Falcon
Heavy is a fraction of the cost – at $90 million. And unlike the SLS, it is designed to be reusable.
However, a lot of time and resources have already been put into the SLS,
which passed an unmanned test launch in 2022, and is scheduled to take the
first components to the Lunar Gateway aboard Artemis IV by September 2028.
Yet one thing is undeniable. In an era of commercial space innovation,
it is getting harder and harder to justify NASA’s budget. But there
are two major problems with relying on private companies to swoop in and replace NASA’s work.
Firstly, no commercial alternatives are expected to be certified or operational in time to meet
the 2028 timeline. Delays would be inevitable, which could give a first-mover advantage to
other nations, including China — a direct conflict with this administration’s goals.
The second, and more pressing problem, is the message this sends to the international
space exploration community. Many countries — including Canada, Japan, the UAE, and the
EU — have already invested heavily in Artemis’s Gateway. Money has been spent. Agreements for
hardware development and supply have been signed. If NASA can’t uphold its end of the deal due to
financial strain, this would completely erode trust in US-led space initiatives.
There was once a time when pioneering space missions without US backing were unthinkable.
But if this budget proposal passes, it might not be such a far-fetched reality anymore. NASA’s
future, prestige, and reputation hang in the balance. And the vultures are already circling.
While NASA faces a funding crisis, private space companies are growing fast. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is
projected to surpass $15.5 billion in revenue in 2025. That’s 82% of NASA’s proposed budget.
SpaceX plans to launch an orbital mission every other day in 2025, targeting 170 total by the end
of the year. Much of the funding comes from Musk’s other venture, Starlink, which is set to bring in
$11.8 billion in 2025 through military contracts and strong consumer demand. That cash is funnelled
into bolder ambitions, like the heavy-lift Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built.
It is designed to carry hundreds of tonnes of cargo to the Moon and beyond,
with ambitions of interplanetary flights carrying 100 people at a time. SpaceX claims Starship
rockets are fully reusable, created to return to launch sites and be caught after flight.
They plan to launch 25 Starships in 2025, and 400 over four years,
while building a Starfactory that will be able to produce up to 1,000 Starships per year. The
goal is cost-efficient transport of crew and cargo to build a self-sustaining civilization on Mars.
Other private players like Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic
are targeting space tourism. Despite ticket prices upwards of $600,000 for Branson’s
90-minute suborbital flights, more than 675 customers have signed up for a 2026 launch.
But the real power of private space companies lies in how they leverage commercial infrastructure to
support military capabilities. SpaceX’s Starshield is derived from the civilian
Starlink satellite network. By 2026, it is projected to support at least 480 satellites
with military functions like target tracking, optical surveillance, and early missile warning.
The US Space Force has embraced this commercial-to-military model,
awarding $13.7 billion to SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance for
national security launches through 2029. This marks a fundamental shift. Now,
military space capabilities are increasingly dependent on commercial
companies rather than legacy defense contractors. While private space companies are making strides
in space tech and engineering, there are three big reasons they don’t hold a candle to NASA.
First, there are technical issues. Only two out of ten Starship test launches have been fully
successful. The rest ended in engine failures, uncontrolled spins, leaks, or explosions. It’s
not unreasonable to assume that with time, SpaceX’s engineering will match their vision.
But that time isn’t now. On the other hand, the Artemis SLS rocket has passed its test launch,
and NASA has decades of experience to lean on when it comes to executing a successful manned mission.
Secondly, private space companies cast aside the science of space and focus solely on engineering
rockets. NASA’s mission is to explore the unknown, innovate for the benefit of humanity,
and inspire the world through discovery. It represents the best of us — the curious,
the brave, and the unrelenting. Over its 67-year lifetime, NASA showed the world the
first pictures of our solar system, revealed hundreds of exo-planets (which we didn’t know
existed until 30 years ago!), discovered dark energy thanks to Hubble, found water on Mars,
and taught us about both the origins of the universe and climate change here on Earth.
You cannot put a price on those kinds of scientific endeavours.
We don’t pursue asteroid samples or measurements of dark matter to make money. We do it to scratch
an existential itch, to understand ourselves, and our place in the universe better.
Private space companies are certainly making strides in space engineering, but they don’t
share this vision to do science for the sake of science. For example, right now, SpaceX’s vision
seems more like that of a transportation company than a space agency, working toward ferrying
people and things from Earth to Mars and back. And even if they did decide to focus on science,
they’d still be beholden to private stakeholders and investors with vested interests — something
NASA doesn’t have hanging over its head. And this brings me to the third big problem
with defunding NASA in favour of privatised space companies. Allowing vested military and privatised
interests to dominate space poses grave risks to the future of humanity and the integrity of space
itself. When powerful elites gain access to cosmic resources, space becomes a theatre for profit,
control, colonisation — not a frontier for knowledge and shared progress. The militarisation
of space could escalate global tensions, as nations vie for orbital supremacy and weaponized
dominance. Meanwhile, corporate exploitation of resources like lunar minerals or asteroid
metals threatens to turn the cosmos into another arena of conquest and inequality, where the rich
extract value and the rest are left behind. The idea of space as sacred and untouched is
lost when driven by greed. Scientific exploration seeks understanding, not ownership. By keeping
space for science, we preserve its wonder and ensure it remains a shared legacy for
all people, now and into the future. And yet, it seems that whether the
proposed NASA budget passes or not, this new dependence on commercial space solutions will
only continue to grow. NATO released its first Commercial Space Strategy earlier this year,
emphasising the integration of commercial space solutions into military functions. However, the
increasing dependence of military capabilities on space tourism profits might lead to some tension
down the line. Commercial companies and national interests don’t always align. What happens when
there is a direct conflict of interest? What happens if companies like SpaceX face financial
difficulties and can’t support their contracts? With NASA's budget under threat, this dual
commercial-military model becomes the main driver of American space
capabilities. And it could fundamentally alter who controls access to space and on what terms.
The good news is NASA’s budget cuts aren’t final yet. Congress still has to vote, and for now,
not everyone’s on board. In a July 10 meeting, several congressmen pushed back, with Senator
Chris Van Hollen stating, “We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA Science by 47% and
terminated 55 operating and planned missions.” Adding to the pressure, all living former NASA
Science Mission Directorate administrators wrote a joint letter opposing the budget,
warning it would cede U.S. leadership in space and science to China and other nations
and squander billions in public investment. And this isn’t just American paranoia.
While the US is privatising space, China is pursuing an aggressive state-funded strategy,
aiming to land humans on the Moon by 2030 and Mars by 2045. Despite not yet launching an astronaut,
India is gearing up to be a major player. They’ve completed lunar and Mars missions for less than
the cost of a Hollywood movie and now aim to build a moon-orbiting space station by 2040.
The US government has until October 1st to decide NASA’s fate. The budget bill must pass both the
Senate and the House of Representatives, and then be signed by the president.
Until then, the agency’s future remains uncertain. But as NASA’s former science chiefs remind us,
"Investments in NASA science are a powerful driver of the US economy and technological
leadership. The science NASA produces results in a positive view of America
at home and around the world. They are a visible example of what makes America great.”