A renewed threat to JPL as the Trump administration tries again to cut NASA

WASHINGTON- NASA won back the world’s attention with Artemis II, which took astronauts to the Moon and back for the first time in half a century. But the agency’s science projects could be threatened again as the Trump administration renews its efforts to drastically cut its funding, including that of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The cuts, proposed in the Trump administration’s 2027 budget request to Congress, would pose new challenges to the already weakened laboratory run by Caltech and could be largely detrimental to U.S. efforts to bring new discoveries back from space. They echo the administration’s attempt last year to cut NASA funding, an attempt rejected by Congress.

Although Project Artemis is touted as laying the groundwork for a crewed NASA mission to Mars, exploration of the Red Planet is among the efforts that could be scaled back. The rover currently exploring the ancient Mars River Delta and a mission orbiting Venus are among projects involving JPL that are expected to see spending cuts, according to an analysis of NASA’s budget proposal by the nonprofit Planetary Society.

“It’s not [because] they no longer produce good science. There’s no rhyme or reason to this,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, who last year led opposition to similar administration efforts to cut NASA funding.

Storm clouds hover over the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on February 7, 2024.

(David McNew/Getty Images)

This time, the administration is asking Congress to cut NASA funding by 23 percent, including 46 percent in its science programs, which are responsible for developing spacecraft and sending them into space to observe and analyze the data they return.

The proposal would cancel 53 science missions and cut funding for others, according to the Planetary Society analysis. The effort to reduce NASA’s scientific activities is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reduce scientific research at federal agencies.

The plan quickly drew bipartisan criticism from members of Congress, who in January rejected the administration’s similar proposal for 2026. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA, noted last week that he would work to similarly fund NASA for 2027, saying it would be “a mistake” not to fund science missions.

Moran plans to hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman before the end of April to review the budget request, a spokesperson for his office said. The president’s budget request is a request to Congress, which ultimately has the authority to allocate funds.

But until Congress creates its own budget, NASA will use the plan as a road map, which could slow down grants and contracts. The proposal “still creates tremendous chaos and uncertainty in the meantime for critical missions, science personnel and long-term research planning,” said Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), whose district includes JPL.

A NASA spokesperson declined to comment Friday. In the budget request, Isaacman wrote that NASA was “pursuing a focused, right-sized portfolio” for its space science missions to align with Trump’s federal cost-cutting goals.

The budget “reinforces U.S. leadership in space science through groundbreaking missions, completed research, and next-generation observatories,” Isaacman wrote.

Jared Isaacman testifies during his confirmation hearing as NASA administrator in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on December 3, 2025.

(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

At JPL — which has led innovation in space science and technology from its La Cañada Flintridge campus for decades — questions were already swirling about the lab’s role in the future of NASA’s work.

Multiple series of layoffs over the past two years, the definancing of its besieged Sample return mission to Mars and the Trump administration’s shift toward lunar exploration and abandonment of the type of scientific work performed by JPL has pushed the lab into difficult times.

There has been a steady stream of employee departures in recent months, and those who have remained have scrambled to seek outside funding from private investors, sell JPL technology to companies and increase productivity in hopes of keeping the lab afloat, according to two former staffers, who requested anonymity to describe the mood inside the lab.

“If we’re not doing science, then what are we doing? » asked one former employee, who recently left JPL after more than a decade there.

A spokesperson for the laboratory declined to comment, referring the Times to the budget proposal.

NASA programs slated for cancellation or reduction support thousands of jobs at JPL and other centers, said Chu, who has led a campaign for increased funding for NASA science. After last year’s layoffs, JPL “cannot afford to lose any more of this expertise,” she said in a statement.

Among the JPL projects that appear likely to be canceled are two involving Venus, Dreier said. One of them, Veritas, is in the early stages of development and will provide work to the lab over the next few years, he said.

The project would be the first U.S. mission to Venus in more than 30 years, Dreier said, and aims to perform high-resolution mapping of the planet’s surface and observe its atmosphere.

The Perseverance rover, which is on Mars collecting rock and soil samples, could face spending cuts. The budget request proposes withdrawing some funding from Perseverance to finance other planetary science missions and reducing the rover’s “pace of operations.”

Although it is uncertain how samples from Mars might return to Earth, the rover is still being used to explore the planet and search for evidence of whether it might have been habitable.

Researchers hope that tubes of Martian rock, soil and sediment can eventually be brought back to Earth for study. The team has about half a dozen more sample tubes to fill and the rover is in good shape, said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist and professor at Arizona State University who leads the camera team on Perseverance, which works daily with JPL.

He said NASA’s spending proposal presents “no plan” for the future of the agency’s work.

“Are people supposed to just walk away from their consoles,” Bell asked, “and leave these orbiters around other planets or these rovers on other worlds – let them die?”

The NASA document did not clearly indicate which programs were subject to reductions and did not list which projects were subject to cancellation. The Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society each analyzed the proposal and found that dozens of projects appeared to have been canceled without being named in the document.

Within NASA, other projects expected to be canceled according to the Planetary Society’s analysis include New Horizons, a spacecraft exploring the outer limits of the solar system; the Atmospheric Observing System, a planned project to collect weather, air quality and climate data; and Juno, a spacecraft studying Jupiter.

The administration’s plan also doesn’t prioritize new science projects, Bell said, further undermining long-term job stability and space discovery at centers like JPL.

“We’re going through a long period right now with very few opportunities to build these spacecraft,” Bell said. “All NASA centers suffer from lack of opportunities.”

Last year, the Trump administration proposed cutting NASA funding by nearly half for 2026. Instead, Congress approved funding in January that provided $24.4 billion to the agency — a cut of about 29% instead of the proposed 46%. The 2027 budget request asks for $18.8 billion.

Congress has kept funding for science missions at a near-flat level, allocating $7.25 billion for science missions, a decrease of about 1 percent from 2025. The administration had proposed reducing science investment to $3.91 billion. This time, the budget asks for $3.89 billion.

Under the Trump administration, NASA has focused on exploring the Moon, including this month’s successful Artemis II mission. Isaacman, who defended the proposed cuts on CNN last week touted the agency’s lunar projects, including a construction project a base on the moon.

The agency has indicated its commitment to some existing science missions, including the James Webb Space Telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the Dragonfly spacecraft scheduled to launch to Saturn’s moon in 2028, and other projects.

“NASA doesn’t have a major problem, we just need to focus on executing and delivering results that will change the world,” Isaacman said on CNN.

Scientists have urged the government not to choose between funding science and exploration, but to maintain investment in both.

“It’s ultimately a little confusing, especially on the heels of the Artemis II mission,” said Roohi Dalal, deputy director of public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “The scientific community… provides essential services to ensure that astronauts can safely complete their mission, and yet at the same time they face this significant reduction. »