NASA is being directed to phase out multibillion-dollar programs, managed from its flagship center in Huntsville, that are designed to ferry people to and from the moon.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal also calls for a 31% reduction in the space agency’s workforce nationwide, to just under 12,000 personnel, according to documents released last week by the Office of Management and Budget.
The budget request instead puts emphasis on investing in the private space industry and earmarks $350 million for technologies to support crewed missions to Mars. It comes at a time of upheaval for NASA: Shortly after its release, the Trump administration walked back its nomination of a tech billionaire with Alabama ties to lead the space agency.
The White House previewed the cuts in a budget outline released last month. In that document, the administration called for the elimination of the Space Launch System and its Orion crew capsule, dismissing them as, “grossly expensive and delayed.” The SLS is the super-heavy, expendable launch vehicle that is scheduled to carry crews to lunar orbit throughout the life of the agency’s Artemis program.
In line with the earlier budget preview, the administration’s $18.8 billion funding request for NASA is down 24.3%, or $6 billion, from the $24.8 billion approved for the space agency last year. The main cuts come to science programs, with 41 “lower-priority missions” being eliminated. Those include the New Horizons Pluto probe and the Juno Jupiter orbiter, along with the office of STEM engagement. It would be the largest single-year cut in NASA’s history.
Eliminating SLS and Orion will, “[pave] the way for more cost-effective, next-generation commercial systems that will support subsequent NASA lunar missions,” according to budget documents.
Both are key programs for Marshall Space Flight Center, one of the largest of NASA’s 10 field centers, which employs nearly 7,000 federal workers and contractors in Huntsville and manages a multibillion-dollar budget related to human spaceflight.
Marshall is the agency’s lead center for SLS, managing the booster, engines, stages, and integration. Major Huntsville aerospace contractors including Dynetics, Aerojet Rocketdyne, United Launch Alliance and Teledyne Brown Engineering contribute to the development, production and operation of the SLS’s various elements.
A 2024 study found a greater economic impact for NASA’s Artemis-related work in Alabama than in any other state. It tallied $5.1 billion in effects and attributed much of that to the reach of Marshall Space Flight Center and the contracting it oversees.
Artemis, NASA’s $100 billion, decade-long human lunar exploration program, includes plans for a permanent colony on the moon, which is intended to serve as a steppingstone for crewed Mars missions. Artemis currently consists of 10 planned lunar missions through 2035, all of them intended to launch atop the SLS and to house the crew in Orion capsules.
Trump’s budget supports Artemis II and III, while after that, it envisions “commercial transportation services … through a competitive contract, incentivizing performance and promoting innovation and efficiency.”
Phasing out SLS and Orion raises questions about how astronauts would reach the moon starting with the Artemis IV mission, currently scheduled for summer 2028. Orion is the program’s only crew capsule and SLS its only launch vehicle.
Commercial landers made by SpaceX and Blue Origin are planned for the journey from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface, and those would be launched aboard rockets from the two companies. But neither has yet matched the SLS and Orion duo, which sent an uncrewed capsule around the moon and back to Earth in December 2022 under Artemis 1.
SpaceX’s Starship has recorded four successful flights since April 2023 but has suffered a recent string of setbacks. On its ninth launch in late May, the partially reusable vehicle broke up as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, making its third straight failure.
Meanwhile, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket took its first flight in January. The second stage successfully reached orbit, though the first stage was lost. The second launch of New Glenn was expected in late spring.