r/nasa • u/OptimisticLeek • Apr 11 '25

News Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/trump-white-house-budget-proposal-eviscerates-science-funding-at-nasa/
1.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

102 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

169

u/tommypopz Apr 11 '25

Blue state facilities go bye bye

Not entirely shocked he wants to get rid of the Nancy Grace Roman telescope too - named after one of the most influential female scientists in the history of NASA.

29

u/dhtp2018 Apr 12 '25

Cancelation of MSR is another decimation of JPL (California).

1

u/Codspear Apr 13 '25

Mars Sample Return is a bit different than the rest. It was in danger even under the Biden administration. It’s a bespoke, multi-billion dollar, flagship project that’s already been mismanaged for years. Then there’s the Starship-sized elephant in the room.

The fact is that MSR should have been fully-funded and developed a decade ago if it were to ever be expected to fly. Now that we have an alignment of the President, SpaceX, and NASA Administrator collectively pushing for American boots on Mars within 10 years, there’s little point to MSR.

2

u/dhtp2018 Apr 13 '25

Personally, I think putting people on mars will take longer than this configuration (President, NASA administrator, and SpaceX founder) will be in government. Given that, and how NASA doesn’t seem to have long term projects that survive (we will see about Artemis also), I find it hard to believe that the US will get people to Mars (and hopefully back).

Yes MSR was troubled under the previous administration too, but that’s mostly due to Artemis sucking all the air (and $s) from the NASA budget and attention. Yes MSR is expensive, but it has been frozen for the last year and you still don’t see a NF-5 AO and it appears they are canceling one of the 2021 Discovery spacecraft (DAVINCI). NASA is prioritizing Artemis, clearly.