Trump refocuses NASA on Musk's dream of traveling to Mars and chainsaws the Space Station.

Although Elon Musk is stepping down from his role at the White House to return to his business, the first budgets of Trump's second term show that the two remain in sync regarding plans for NASA. In a budget that follows rumors that the US president wants to eliminate nearly 50% of the space agency's science spending , it's not all cuts: there's also a new $1 billion allocation for human exploration of Mars, Musk's ultimate dream and the ultimate reason he founded his aerospace company, SpaceX.

Following a study of cuts conducted by the DOGE —the department created by Elon Musk to advise the US president—the Trump administration has proposed a total NASA budget of $18.8 billion in 2026. This would represent a sharp drop of almost 25% compared to the $24.9 billion in 2025, alarming experts. “The White House has proposed the largest annual budget cut to NASA in its history,” said Casey Dreier, head of space policy at the Planetary Society. The nonprofit organization, which promotes scientific space exploration, has called on the US Congress to firmly reject Trump’s proposal because it “represents a step backward for American leadership in science, exploration, and innovation in space.”

Since NASA's budget and priorities are set by Congress, which can reject and modify the US president's proposals, the cuts and sweeping changes proposed by Trump are not definitive. However, they are the first clear indication of his administration's plans for the space agency. They are now real proposals, beyond the exalted speeches in which he pledged to send "American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes [referring to the US flag] on the planet Mars," something that is materially impossible to happen during his term.

What is possible, and what its budget indicates, is to refocus NASA on human space exploration, shifting it away from its current focus on scientific research, carried out both by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) and by probes traveling through the Solar System. Although the cuts are widespread across all areas of the US space agency, they particularly affect robotic scientific missions.

Astronauts, more protagonists

This is the case with the mission to return the Martian rocks collected in recent years by the Perseverance rover—which arrived on Mars in February 2021. Faced with rising costs and accumulated delays, Trump's new budget proposes canceling the Martian sample return mission. NASA would thus forgo competing with China, which plans to send a robot to bring back rocks from Mars in 2031, and entrust that task to the first astronauts to travel to the red planet.

If the US Congress approves this proposal—which cuts $2.265 billion from space science missions and another $1.161 billion from Earth science research—it will also cancel the use of satellites to monitor Earth's climate and studies to develop greener aviation. In addition, the agency would stop investing $143 million annually in fostering the careers of a new generation of scientists, technologists, and engineers. “NASA will inspire the next generation of explorers through exciting and ambitious space missions, not by funding woke STEM programs, which prioritize some groups of students over others and have had minimal impact on the aerospace workforce,” explains the budget document presented by the White House.

Trump and Musk's budget chainsaw also extends to the ISS, to which they intend to allocate $508 million less in 2026. This would mean reducing the number of crew members permanently inhabiting the space station and reducing its scientific research capacity, "focusing it on critical efforts for the Moon and Mars exploration programs." The plan is to continue working on a transition that would replace the ISS with several private stations for scientific research and prepare for the safe deorbiting of the station, sinking it into the ocean starting in 2030; NASA already commissioned that task to Elon Musk's SpaceX company in 2024.

First the Moon, then Mars

The new Trump administration has for the first time demonstrated its commitment to the Artemis program to return to the Moon, which was launched in 2017 by the first Trump administration. The budget proposal makes it clear that "the priority is to return to the Moon before China succeeds in getting there and putting an American on Mars."

To that end, the proposal is to maintain the Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 missions—scheduled for 2026 and 2027 —but then cancel the SLS rocket and Orion capsule, in favor of private spacecraft. “The budget funds a program to replace SLS and Orion flights to the Moon with more cost-effective commercial systems that would support subsequent, more ambitious lunar missions,” details the White House document, which also proposes canceling the Lunar Gateway space station, designed by NASA in conjunction with the European ESA and other space agencies.

The biggest beneficiaries of this shift are billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Their space companies—SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively—are the most advanced in the development of reusable mega-rockets capable of sending human spacecraft to the Moon. However, both SpaceX's Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn are still in the development phase, and it's not yet known when they might be operational.

That's why Trump's nominee to lead NASA, fellow billionaire Jared Isaacman, acknowledged on April 9 during his Senate examination that the current Artemis program—with NASA's own SLS and Orion spacecraft—is the fastest way for the US to return to the Moon and beat China in this new space race. Pressured by both Republican and Democratic senators, Isaacman reversed his initial line that Mars would be the priority and admitted that they must first return to the Moon. However, he stated that once that goal is achieved, "NASA should move away from competing with the private sector and instead focus its world-class talent and infrastructure on developing the next generation of exploration technologies (including nuclear spacecraft) as a logical next step."

An extra life for SLS and Orion

Isaacman had always been highly critical of the current Artemis program design, citing the 2024 program as an example of NASA's cost overruns and inefficiency. Last month, before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, he clashed with legislators from states where the manufacturing of SLS and Orion supports tens of thousands of families. Once those senators managed to extract a short-term written commitment from him to use this system for traveling to the Moon, they voted in favor of his nomination on April 30.

Thus, everything points to Isaacman ultimately leading NASA. All that remains is for the full Senate to ratify his appointment, in a vote expected to take place in the coming weeks. The path to the space agency's new budget will be longer. After the first draft, presented last Friday, the White House's detailed proposal will arrive at the end of the month. And it's the US Congress that will draft the final budget and vote on it after the summer. Meanwhile, Trump's plan to cancel SLS after the Artemis 3 mission takes the first astronauts of the 21st century to the Moon is just that: an intention.

The only thing that remains firm is Trump's determination to reorient NASA. He intends to turn it into a manned space travel agency, paving the way to the Moon and Mars, so that private companies like Elon Musk's can then commercially exploit the benefits of opening these new frontiers for humanity.