Trump’s plans to slash the space budget: “America is stepping back from leadership in virtually every science area, including NASA”

Though President Donald Trump often speaks about space technology and exploration, he has not provided NASA, the country’s premier space agency, with a particularly generous budget.

Elon Musk, a billionaire and prominent Trump supporter who recently stepped down from his role as a “special government employee,” remains a major recipient of government contracts through his company, SpaceX. On X, the social media platform he also owns, Musk noted that in the coming years, SpaceX’s revenue is expected to exceed NASA’s budget far.

However, it is unclear what Musk is referring to with the $1.1 billion figure, as the budget in 2025 was around $24 billion. According to The Independent, SpaceX has received $21 billion since 2008.

Nevertheless, Musk’s SpaceX is far from the only private firm receiving work contracts that, decades ago, would have been handled by NASA.

SpaceNews, an outlet that tracks changes to NASA’s budget very closely, reported in late May that even deeper funding cuts would be made, after an initial budget was released by NASA earlier that same month. The cuts, which slash NASA’s budget from $24.9 billion to $18.8 billion, would represent the “sharpest year-over-year cut proposed for NASA and would bring the agency’s budget down to levels last seen in 1961 when corrected for inflation.”

Why is the White House cutting NASA’s budget?

Republicans are looking everywhere, besides the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, to make cuts to federal spending. These agencies will see historic increases in spending if the budget bill passed by House Republicans is approved by the Senate and signed into law. In part, these cuts are needed to avoid massive increases in the deficit and national debt, as the White House puts pressure on Congress to pass massive tax cuts, which economists warn amount of a wealth transfer to the wealthiest households by slashing programs that many working class families rely on, including Medicaid and SNAP.

However, some former NASA administrations and employees are worried about what the cuts could mean for the advicements the agency has in the works, including a manned mission to the Moon. John Grunsfeld, who worked as a NASA associate administrator for science, told PBS that he saw the cuts at NASA and other agencies that support scientific research as “a signal that America is stepping back from leadership in virtually every science area.”

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