WASHINGTON — The bipartisan co-chairs of a congressional caucus have criticized proposed cuts in NASA’s science programs, marking the first Republican opposition in Congress to the plans.
In an April 15 statement, the co-chairs of the Congressional Planetary Science Caucus, Reps. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said they were “extremely alarmed” by reports that the draft budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would cut NASA’s science budget nearly in half.
“If enacted, these proposed cuts would demolish our space economy and workforce, threaten our national security and defense capabilities, and ultimately surrender the United States’ leadership in space, science, and technological innovation to our adversaries,” they wrote.
“We will work closely with our colleagues in Congress on a bipartisan basis to push back against these proposed cuts and program terminations and to ensure full and robust funding for NASA Science in Fiscal Year 2026 appropriations.”
The “passback” budget document, delivered from the Office of Management and Budget to NASA last week, proposed spending just $3.9 billion on science at NASA in 2026, down from $7.3 billion in 2025.
It would cancel several missions in development, including the Roman Space Telescope and Mars Sample Return (MSR), and threaten many others either in early stages of formulation or in extended operations after completing their prime mission.
While other members of Congress have previously criticized the proposal, this statement is noteworthy because Bacon is one of the first Republicans in Congress to criticize the proposed cuts.
Previous comments, primarily by members in California and Maryland that host centers that would be hard-hit by the proposed cuts, were from Democrats.
Bacon and Chu relaunched the caucus a little more than a year ago, with the stated goal of educating other members on the benefits of funding planetary science and related research, such as studies of exoplanets and the search for life beyond Earth.
Bacon, whose Omaha-area district has little in the way of direct connections to such research, said at the time his interest was in “prioritizing exploration.”
Chu’s district, by contrast, includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
She has been an outspoken advocate of both the lab and MSR, one of its key programs, particularly as funding issues led to layoffs of hundreds of JPL employees last year amid reviews and restructuring of MSR.
“I am horrified by the reports that the Trump White House wants to defund the MSR mission entirely,” Chu said in an April 14 statement responding to reports about cuts in the passback.
“Ending funding now would completely undermine the decades of investments already made into our Mars program, devastate our nation’s Mars workforce at JPL and around the country, and threaten years of future scientific discovery and innovation to come.”
MSR has been under scrutiny long before the passback, though, as cost overruns and schedule delays led to NASA reviews last year about the program.
In January, NASA announced it would study two alternative approaches to carrying out MSR that would cut the cost of MSR, which has ballooned to as high as $11 billion, to as low as $5.8 billion.
Those studies are intended to continue into next year get revised elements of the program, such as a redesigned Mars Ascent Vehicle rocket, through a preliminary design review (PDR).
“In our plan going forward, we talk about the need to mature those designs to PDR level, and it’s going to take us about a year, year and a half to get there,” Donya Douglas-Bradshaw, MSR program director at NASA, said at a March 31 meeting of the National Academies’ Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Science.
She acknowledged, though, that those plans, announced by NASA just two weeks before the start of the new Trump administration, could be changed.
“There is the potential that the new administration may have some opinions or ideas on the architecture options that are under consideration.”
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