The White House has announced the largest cut to NASA’s budget in its history.

The Trump administration has reduced funding for research and canceled several missions, opting instead to invest billion in Elon Musk’s ambition to send people to Mars.

The $6 billion cuts include scrapping the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, which has already cost NASA billions and aimed to bring samples collected from the Martian surface back to Earth to be studied. 

The budget proposal, released today, states that NASA will ‘terminate unaffordable missions’ such as MSR, adding that it is ‘grossly overbudget’ and that its goals can be achieved through human missions to Mars. 

In 2020, the maximum total cost for MSR was estimated to be around $3 billion. But since then, it has risen to up to $11 billion.

The proposal also includes significant cuts to NASA’s International Space Station (ISS) program, with plans to reduce the space station’s crew size and onboard research, prepare to decommission the station by 2030 and ultimately replace it with commercial space stations. 

Such cuts will supposedly allow NASA to allocate billions of dollars to ensure ‘that America’s human space exploration efforts remain unparalleled, innovative, and efficient.’   

The proposal emphasizes the importance of NASA beating China back to the moon and putting the first humans on Mars, with the latter being the overarching goal of Musk’s spaceflight company, SpaceX. 

The White House has taken a sledgehammer to NASA’s 2026 budget, announcing deep cuts to research funding and allocating one billion dollars to fund Elon Musk’s dream of sending humans to Mars

‘To achieve these objectives, [NASA] would streamline the workforce, IT services, NASA center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities,’ the proposal states. 

DailyMail.com has reached out to NASA for comment. 

During his Senate confirmation hearing in April, President Donald Trump’s pick for NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, was pressed about his commitment to the agency’s ongoing Artemis program, which aims to put American astronauts back to the moon as a stepping-stone toward future Mars missions.

Isaacman advocated for accelerating plans to put humans on the Red Planet by pursuing moon and Mars missions simultaneously.

‘We will prioritize sending American astronauts to Mars and along the way we will inevitably have the capabilities to return to the moon,’ he said.  

The proposed budget would leave room for that possibility, allocating significant new funds toward Mars missions without specifying any cuts to the Artemis program. 

But it does aim to eliminate NASA’s ‘grossly expensive and delayed’ Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft after three flights. These craft are currently set to launch the first crewed Artemis test flight in April 2026. 

‘SLS alone costs $4 billion per launch and is 140 percent over budget,’ the proposal states.

‘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 cuts include scrapping the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, which has already cost NASA billions and aims to bring samples collected from the Martian surface back to Earth. Pictured: the MRS mission’s Perseverance Mars rover, which reached the Red Planet in 2020 

The budget also proposes eliminating NASA’s ‘grossly expensive and delayed’ Space Launch System (SLS) rocket (pictured) after three Artemis flights

The White House also proposed eliminating funds for climate monitoring satellites, which experts say could have serious consequences for managing wildfires, and climate-focused ‘green-aviation’ spending. 

The Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit organization that promotes space exploration, released a statement condemning the proposed 24 percent cut to NASA’s budget, stating that it would be the ‘largest single-year cut to NASA in American history.’ 

‘It would recklessly slash NASA’s science budget by 47 [percent], forcing widespread terminations of functional missions worth billions of dollars,’ its experts stated. 

‘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 will cause chaos, waste the taxpayers’ investment, and undermine American leadership in space. 

This budget has not been approved. The full budget will need to be debated and approved by Congress before it is released, which could take until the end of the 2025 fiscal year or longer. 

‘We urge Congress to swiftly reject this destructive proposal and instead pursue a path consistent with the President’s vision,’ the Planetary Society stated.