Trump's big bill has billions added for Artemis, KSC and moving a space shuttle

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Jul 5, 2025

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ORLANDO, Fla. — When President Donald Trump floated his budget for NASA for 2026, it slashed the science budget by half, proposed the end of the Artemis program’s Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and Gateway lunar station, and cut back support of the International Space Station.

While Congress will ultimately decide which programs get funded in the federal government’s budget, that may not happen for months. Instead of waiting, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, took aim at Trump’s tax and spending bill, which the president has been calling the “big, beautiful bill.”

Cruz spearheaded an amendment to shoehorn more than $10 billion into the legislation, also known as a reconciliation bill, to save some of those NASA targets. It also sets aside money to move retired Space Shuttle Discovery from its current home at the Smithsonian outside of Washington to Texas.

The bill was approved by both the Senate and House this week and signed by Trump on July 4. The added funding falls outside of NASA’s annual budget, and would be available for use over the next seven years.

Cruz is the chair of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and initially proposed the amendment “ensuring the U.S. — not China — gets to Mars and gets back to the moon first.”

It ensures funding to a program that has endured heavy criticism because of years of delays and a ballooning price tag that has cost the nation nearly $100 billion, but has so far only managed one launch.

That funding includes $4.1 billion for the SLS rockets needed for the Artemis IV and V missions. That is a big win for prime contractor Boeing, which makes the rocket core stages as well as Melbourne-based L3Harris, which produces the core stages’ four RS-25 engines. It’s also good news for Northrop Grumman, which makes the SLS’ two solid rocket boosters, that when combined with the core stage produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust on liftoff.

The lone flight of SLS on Artemis I in 2022 remains the most powerful rocket to ever reach orbit. Artemis II, which will feature the first crewed flight of Orion, is slated for no later than April 2026 on a mission to fly around, but not land on the moon. Artemis III is still on the calendar for summer 2027, which looks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972.

Trump’s proposed budget still looks to kill off the use of both SLS and the Orion spacecraft after Artemis III, and instead continue its moon and Mars missions using commercial rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn. It also looks to kill the Gateway lunar space station, parts of which were supposed to be launch on Artemis IV.

Cruz’s supplemental funding proposal instead adds $2.6 billion to fully fund Gateway.

By saving Artemis IV and V with the SLS, that also means the new mobile launcher 2 currently under construction at Kennedy Space Center may actually get used. It’s designed for the larger versions of SLS on those two missions, which will use a more powerful upper stage designed by the European Space Agency. Those missions are still on NASA’s road map for 2028 and 2029.

By keeping them, it would also save jobs at KSC. Trump’s proposed budget also seeks to shutter the KSC-based Exploration Ground Systems program, which employs about 500 civil servants and 3,000 contractors. Among all Artemis programs, KSC employs about 700 civil servants and 3,850 contractors, according to NASA.

On a smaller scale, the proposal also sets aside $20 million toward Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule for Artemis IV.

One late addition to the amendment that managed to get through was $85 million set aside to move Space Shuttle Discovery from its current home at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Space Center Houston in Texas.

Other major funding adds include $700 million for a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which would support the beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission; $1.25 billion to support International Space Station operations over five years until its planned decommissioning in 2030; and $325 million to fund the deorbit vehicle, which is being designed by SpaceX, needed to bring the station back to burn up safely in Earth’s atmosphere.

It also features $885 million to upgrade NASA facilities including $250 million for Kennedy Space Center to support “construction, revitalization, recapitalization, or other infrastructure projects and improvements” to be allocated no later than fiscal year 2026.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill supports the Artemis Program and invests in NASA centers to keep the U.S. leading in space,” posted Rep. Mike Haridopolos, R-Fla., on X. The Space Coast congressman is chairman of the House Space Subcommittee and welcomed the Senate additions to the reconciliation bill. “We’re going back to the moon, on to Mars, and beyond!”

Funding for fiscal 2026, which begins in October this year, won’t be determined until Congress passes that budget bill. But when that will happen is uncertain. The federal government this year is actually running under a continuing resolution that maintained levels from the 2024 budget, meaning NASA’s take has been about $25 billion

It’s possible funding for fiscal year 2026 will continue under similar resolutions until a full budget is agreed upon.

Trump’s proposal still looks to slash NASA’s budget to $18.8 billion. The biggest loser is more than $3.4 billion cut from science, including $1.15 billion from Earth science, $1 billion from astrophysics, more than $800 million from planetary science and $370 million from heliophysics. It also slashes space technology and zeros out STEM education.

Nonprofit group The Planetary Society said the overall budget would be the smallest for NASA since 1961, and called it an “extinction-level event” for NASA’s science efforts, killing 41 science projects, or one-third of NASA’s science portfolio.

That includes 19 existing missions “that are currently active, healthy, and producing invaluable science,” according to a statement from the Planetary Society. Among them are New Horizons that visited Pluto and is now in the Kuiper Belt; Juno, the only mission near Jupiter; and the Chandra X-ray Observatory. It would also end the UCF-led GOLD atmospheric science mission that launched in 2018.

“These represent a cumulative investment of over $12 billion and years of work to design and build. These are irreplaceable assets,” the statement reads.