Senate response to White House budget for NASA: Keep SLS, nix science
Negotiations over the US federal budget for fiscal year 2026 are in the beginning stages, but when it comes to space, the fault lines are already solidifying in the Senate.
The Trump White House released its budget request last Friday, and this included detailed information about its plans for NASA. On Thursday, just days later, the US Senate shot back with its own budget priorities for the space agency.
The US budget process is complicated and somewhat broken in recent years, as Congress has failed to pass a budget on time. So, we are probably at least several months away from seeing a final fiscal year 2026 budget from Congress. But we got our first glimpse of the Senate's thinking when the chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) released his "legislative directives" for NASA on Thursday.