President Donald Trump’s proposed budget looks to end the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and Gateway space station central to NASA’s existing Artemis program — but only after a successful moon landing as the nation remains in a race with China.
A preliminary overview of the White House’s planned 2026 discretionary budget released Friday dubbed SLS and Orion as “grossly expensive and delayed,” citing that each launch SLS rocket alone costs the government $4 billion and is 140% over budget.
It’s among billions in cuts for the overall $18.8 billion proposed budget for NASA, which for the current fiscal year is nearly $25 billion. Ultimately, Congress will pass a budget and it often counters presidential proposals.
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“The budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support more ambitious subsequent lunar missions,” the White House proposal stated. “The budget also proposes to terminate the Gateway, a small lunar space station in development with international partners, which would have been used to support future SLS and Orion missions.”
NASA flew the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission that orbited the moon in 2022 and has its first crewed mission, Artemis II, gearing up to fly around the moon no later than April. Artemis III, still on NASA’s calendar for summer 2027, would return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA’s Office of the Inspector General in 2023 raised the red flag of rising costs of SLS and Orion, noting that by the time it manages to fly Artemis III the program would have topped $93 billion. That includes billions more than originally announced in 2012 as years of delays and cost increases plagued the lead-up to Artemis I.
Even nearly two years ago the audit said NASA should consider alternatives.
“Although the SLS is the only launch vehicle currently available that meets Artemis mission needs, in the next 3 to 5 years other human-rated commercial alternatives that are lighter, cheaper, and reusable may become available,” the audit said. “Therefore, NASA may want to consider whether other commercial options should be a part of its mid- to long-term plans to support its ambitious space exploration goals.”
That includes heavy-lift rockets such as Blue Origin’s New Glenn that flew for the first time early this year as well as the in-development SpaceX Starship that has made several suborbital test flights.
To that end, the Trump budget proposal looks to keep the human exploration budget the highest line item with more than $7 billion — including $1 billion in new investments to pursue Mars-focused programs.
That’s the only program with a proposed increase.
The biggest loser in the proposed budget is space science with cuts of more than $2.2 billion followed by more than $1.1 billion in cuts to Earth science, mission support and more than $500 million from space technology.
“In line with the administration’s objectives of returning to the moon before China and putting a man on Mars, the budget would reduce lower priority research and terminate unaffordable missions such as the Mars Sample Return mission that is grossly overbudget and whose goals would be achieved by human missions to Mars,” the proposal stated.
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