The White House's 2026 budget proposal would cancel the lunar Gateway, a NASA-led program with contributions from Canada, Europe, Japan and the UAE. (credit: NASA)

Budget cuts and the fraying of international partnerships

by Jeff Foust
Monday, May 12, 2025

Even if you know the axe is falling, it doesn’t make it any less painful.

It was clear for weeks that the White House would propose major cuts to NASA in its fiscal year 2026 budget request. The leak of the near-final “passback” budget from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in April revealed plans to cut NASA’s science funding by nearly 50%, cancelling several major missions (see “All of the above, or none?”, The Space Review, April 14, 2025). Even before that, it appeared likely that some parts of Artemis, like the Space Launch System and lunar Gateway, would also be threatened, perhaps as part of a promised redirection of human spaceflight from the Moon to Mars.

On May 2, OMB released some more details about its plans in a budget framework document known as the “skinny” budget. (So named because the entire discretionary budget for the federal budget was summarized in just 46 pages; the full NASA budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 was in a “congressional justification” document more than 800 pages long.) The document revealed that the White House would request just $18.8 billion for NASA in 2026, about a quarter less than the $24.9 billion it received in 2025, itself held even from 2024 because of a continuing resolution.

The skinny budget confirmed major cuts in NASA science, although with fewer details than in the passback: Mars Sample Return was the only mission cited by name as slated for cancellation in the budget, although it mentioned that other unspecified space and Earth science missions would also be terminated, like “low-priority climate monitoring satellites.”

The bigger news were the cuts confirmed elsewhere in the budget. The proposal cancels the Gateway outright and would phase out both SLS and Orion after Artemis 3. “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 document states, without elaboration. It would also provide $1 billion “in new investments for Mars-focused programs,” again without details.

While those weren’t necessarily surprising, other proposals in the budget did take people aback. The budget would cut half a billion dollars from the ISS program, forcing NASA to reduce the size of its crew on the station and launching fewer crew and cargo flights. “The station’s reduced research capacity would be focused on efforts critical to the Moon and Mars exploration programs,” it adds.

Space technology would be cut by about 50% in the proposal, including “failing space propulsion projects” it did identify. In a reprise of the first Trump Administration, the budget would also eliminate NASA’s education (aka “STEM Engagement”) programs, claiming the funds—less than 1% of NASA’s overall budget—are “subsidizing woke STEM programming and research.” In the first Trump term, efforts to zero out NASA’s education work were repeatedly rejected on a bipartisan basis in Congress.

Members of Congress as well as space-related organizations were roundly critical of the proposal. “Massive cuts to NASA in the President’s proposed budget are shocking – the largest in American history,” said Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY), the ranking member of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds the agency. “Rather than rooting out so-called ‘government waste’, this budget puts American leadership in science, technology, & innovation at risk.”

The Planetary Society, previously critical of the passback’s cuts to NASA science, reiterated its opposition now that more details about overall budget cuts were clear. “Slashing NASA’s budget by this much, this quickly, without the input of a confirmed NASA Administrator or in response to a considered policy goal, won’t make the agency more efficient,” it stated. “It will cause chaos, waste the taxpayers’ investment, and undermine American leadership in space.”

In the days before the release of the skinny budget, The Planetary Society worked with other organizations on joint letters to key House and Senate committees, both appropriators and authorizers. That letter focused on the passback’s proposed cuts to science programs, which it argued would negatively affect American soft power.

“A 47% reduction to NASA Science would represent a surrender of American leadership in a domain it has long defined,” the letters stated. “At a time when other nations, notably China, are increasing their space science capabilities and cadence, such a self-inflicted wound would cede our hard-won leadership.”

Among the organizations who signed on to the earlier letter was the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, an industry group that primarily includes the major companies working on Artemis—Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman—as well as key suppliers. It was, unsurprisingly, dismayed with the budget request, calling it “deeply concerning” in a statement.

It took aim at the new focus on Mars-related technologies. “This budget’s proposed redirection to unproven technology could derail these efforts, setting back US-led deep space exploration and repeating the mistakes made during the transition from the Shuttle program to Constellation and then to the current Moon to Mars campaign,” it stated.

By contrast, the Commercial Space Federation (CSF), whose membership includes more startups and companies outside the traditional NASA contracting ecosystem, was more open to such a shift, one that would allow for more commercial opportunities. “A thoughtful transition to more competitive commercial partnerships, as proposed by the ‘skinny budget’, will allow the US to conduct human exploration programs with fewer resources,” it stated.

Many critics of the SLS in particular cheered the plan to phase out the rocket, arguing it would end a program that spent tens of billions of dollars for just a single launch to date. But even they suggested the administration had gone too far with cuts to science and space technology.

“That said, the proposed reductions to space and Earth science, space technology, and activity in low-Earth orbit and the ISS, impacting commercial utilization, will have significant negative consequences for the US global posture and the commercial space economy,” CSF stated.

Walther Pelzer (second from right), director general of the German Space Agency, speaks during a panel at the GLEX 2025 conference in New Delhi May 7. (credit: IAF)

“We need to develop alternative cooperations”

The effects of the proposed cuts go beyond the United States. In enacted, though, they would disrupt the activities of several major allies to the United States in civil spaceflight that could, in the long term, have implications far greater than just terminating a rocket or a spacecraft.

The Gateway, for example, has contributions from Canada, Europe, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, providing most of the modules and other key elements of that lunar-orbiting facility: NASA is providing only the (mostly complete) first two elements, along with launches of others. Europe is a partner with NASA on Mars Sample Return and builds the service module for Orion, while Japan has agreed to provide a pressurized rover for later Artemis missions whose plans are, at the very least, in question.

Initial statements from space agencies emphasized that the proposed cuts remain just a proposal to be considered in the coming months by Congress. “We are currently reviewing and engaging with NASA and other international partners on potential implications of this proposal,” said a spokesperson for the Canadian Space Agency. “Our objective is to maintain forward momentum for Canada’s space program.”

“The Budget Request release marks the beginning of the appropriation process in US Congress,” said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency, in a statement, “thus it should be kept in mind that this is still very much a work in progress.”

He noted that while ESA has had discussions with NASA about the budget and noted a “long history of successful partnership” between the agencies, ESA was considering the implications of the cuts and how to respond if they are enacted. “ESA remains open to cooperation with NASA on the programs earmarked for a reduction or termination but is nevertheless assessing the impact with our Member States in preparation for ESA’s June Council,” he stated.

“At ESA’s June Council, based on further developments, there will be an assessment with our Member States of potential actions and alternative scenarios for impacted ESA programs and related European industry,” he added. That could include initiatives ESA will seek funding for at its next ministerial conference in late November, where ESA’s member states will agree on funding levels for programs for the next three years.

Companies outside the US are also taking a wait-and-see approach to the proposed cuts. “Anybody who feels that, because the US White House budget input made a suggestion that Gateway be closed, means that will lead to Canada not building Canadarm3 and that will lead to us not doing anything more work on this contract, that’s a false interpretation of a situation,” said Mike Greenley, CEO of MDA Space, the Canadian company that is the prime contractor for Canada’s contribution to the Gateway.

In an earnings call last week, he noted there was still a long way to go before a proposal to cancel the Gateway actually shut down the program, meaning that his company’s work on a contract worth $1 billion Canadian (US$715 million) from the Canadian Space Agency for the Canadarm3 robotic arm would likely continue at least through the end of this year. “So, there’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge here as we go forward into the future.”

The release of the skinny budget came just days before many space agencies gathered in New Delhi, India, for the Global Conference on Space Exploration, or GLEX, organized by the International Astronautical Federation. NASA’s proposed cuts to exploration programs came up in plenary sessions at the conference last week.

“Artemis is one of our most important topics,” said Walther Pelzer, director general of the German Space Agency. Germany is a major contributor to ESA’s work on the Orion service module, assembled in Bremen. “So, we are very keen to see what is going over there.”

He and others did not hear from NASA directly at GLEX: the agency did not send senior officials to the conference and did not participate in any major conference events. Thus, officials from other countries were freer to speak their minds about the budget and its implications.

“If this plan will be put into practice, a lot of question marks show up,” Pelzer said, expressing doubt NASA could swiftly move ahead to commercial alternatives and human missions to Mars. “I can’t picture that the US will have such a big gap between Artemis 3 and really being capable of going to Mars, and open up space for others to be the leading nation in exploration.”

Notably, some of the space agencies at GLEX suggested it might be time for countries to work together without the United States on exploration. “I think we need to develop alternative cooperations than the ones we were used to,” said Caroline Laurent, director of orbital systems and applications at the French space agency CNES.

“We should look more into cooperation with one another, the ones that are here today, actually: ISRO, the Emirates, Canada, JAXA,” she said. “We should plan more missions with one another in the future.”

“We have to be quite nimble,” said Salem Al Marri, director general of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre in the UAE, which agreed early last year to build the Gateway’s airlock module. If NASA’s plans change, he added, “we have to see how we can move with them and keep these collaborations going.”

In last week’s earnings call, MDA’s Greenley said if the Gateway was cancelled, NASA would work with the other partners to find alternative uses of their contributions. “NASA has signaled its commitment to work with Artemis partners, which include the Canadian Space Agency, on expanding opportunities for meaningful collaboration on the moon and Mars and to repurpose components for use in other missions,” he said.

However, an executive with another company suggested Gateway partners, particularly Europe, might go their own way if NASA cancels the program.

“You take something like Gateway, for instance. Europe may not stop their development just because the US changes their strategy,” said Peter Cannito, CEO of Redwire Space, in an earnings call Monday. “They may just repurpose or redirect or look for new partners internationally to continue that development.”

Redwire is based in the US but has offices in Europe, and Cannito noted in the call that his company won a contract from Thales Alenia Space to provide docking adapters for the I-Hab module that Thales is building as part of ESA’s Gateway contribution.

“I think it’s too early to say, quite frankly, that some of the current development that Europe is working on is going to go away,” he concluded.

However, many in Europe and elsewhere appear willing to continue with Artemis, provided the proposed major cuts to exploration programs aren’t enacted.

“I’m an optimist,” said Pelzer. “Until we really have the final budget, we will stay with the way ahead. We will show to our NASA partners and the other partners in Artemis that we will put everything in place to make sure that the Artemis program will be put into practice.”

Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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