Cutting the budget, a major change in America's return to the moon plan!
The White House hopes to cancel NASA's lunar orbital space station and retire Orion after two more flights.
On May 3, Space News published an article.
The Trump administration hopes to give NASA's Artemis lunar landing program a major overhaul.
The White House's proposed "streamlined budget" for 2026, released on May 2, cuts $879 million, reducing funding for NASA's "traditional manned exploration systems," and gradually phasing out NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) lunar rocket and Orion spacecraft—the current pillars of the Artemis program—after just two more flights.
It will also immediately cancel the Gateway, a small space station NASA plans to build in lunar orbit to support the Artemis program.
"Just one launch of the SLS costs $4 billion, exceeding the budget by 140%," the streamlined budget document states. "The budget proposes plans to replace the SLS and lunar flights of Orion with more cost-effective commercial systems, which will support more ambitious follow-up lunar missions."
NASA currently plans to assemble the space station in lunar orbit in 2027. Some progress has been made toward this goal; for example, the main living module called HALO arrived in the U.S. from Italy last month, where it was built.
This streamlined budget—a rough plan for many other NASA projects as well. Overall, the White House proposal would cut funding for the space agency by $6 billion from the level approved in 2025, a reduction of nearly 25%.
This would be NASA's largest single-year cut in history.
The proposal terminates NASA's Mars sample return program and "cancels funding for low-priority climate monitoring satellites," among other impacts.
But NASA officials remain confident: they are determined to maintain leadership in the space domain.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1831048385910791/
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