April 16, 20255 min readFive Key Climate and Space Projects Are on Trump’s Chopping BlockLeaked budget documents indicate that key NASA and NOAA research projects, such as crucial climate research and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, are at risk of being defunded in 2026Severe mothership shaped thunderstorm races across Kansas, USA. john finney photography/Getty ImagesPreliminary copies of some of the US government’s spending plans suggest that President Donald Trump’s administration intends to slash climate and space science across some US agencies.At risk is research that would develop next-generation climate models, track the planet’s changing oceans and explore the Solar System. NASA’s science budget for the fiscal year 2026 would be cut nearly in half, to US$3.9 billion. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors Earth’s climate and makes weather forecasts, would have its 2026 budget cut by 27%, to $4.5 billion. The leaked documents containing this information were sent by the White House to federal agencies last week; they were reported by other media outlets and obtained by Nature.Although the proposed cuts aren’t final, they have alarmed scientists and science advocates alike. “We’re talking about a wholesale dismantling of NASA’s scientific fleet and the pipeline of future missions,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, a non-profit space organization in Pasadena, California. “Trump’s budget plan for NOAA is both outrageous and dangerous,” says a statement released by Zoe Lofgren, a member of the US House of Representatives from California, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. “This budget will leave NOAA hollowed out.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.“No final funding decisions have been made,” says Alexandra McCandless, a spokesperson for the US Office of Management and Budget. The proposed cuts come as Trump’s team has tried to downsize the US government markedly, firing federal workers en masse and axing programmes, purportedly in the name of government efficiency.Here, Nature looks at some of the programmes and projects that, according to the documents, are on the chopping block.Crucial climate scienceNOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which funds numerous scientific endeavours, including climate modelling, cloud monitoring and hurricane forecasting, would be slashed by 74%, to $171 million. OAR is the agency’s main research arm, with 11 laboratories and 16 cooperative institutes that collaborate with scientists at various universities; the budget proposal would defund any of them that work on climate, weather or the ocean. The draft budget also appears to terminate funding for “Regional Climate Data and Information”, a $50 million programme to help communities with climate science, such as tracking droughts and heat waves. In total, the cuts would eliminate OAR as an independent office and disperse its remaining activities to other parts of NOAA. For many scientists, it’s a sign that the Trump administration is planning to turn its back on research that is needed to help understand long-term climate and environmental effects. “This is a huge threat to research at NOAA, but also to the safety and economic security of the American public,” says Craig McLean, a former assistant administrator for research at NOAA.A next-generation space telescopeThe Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, iconic for their views of the cosmos, won’t last forever. And now, their successor could be in trouble. The $4.3-billion Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is nearing completion at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, but Trump’s preliminary proposal would cancel all funding for it, as well as for many other Goddard projects. During his first term as president in 2017–21, Trump, a Republican, tried repeatedly to eliminate funding for the Roman telescope, but was blocked by the US Congress in each case. The same could happen this time: “I will fight tooth and nail against these cuts,” said Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic senator from Maryland, whose district includes the Goddard centre and who is the ranking member of the congressional spending committee that oversees NASA.An artist’s concept of the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope, now called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.NASA’s Goddard Space Flight CenterEarth-observing satellitesTrump’s proposals would cancel next-generation Earth-observing satellites at both NASA and NOAA. At NASA, the Earth-science budget would be cut in half, to just over $1 billion; that would almost certainly derail efforts to launch a fleet of new satellites to monitor factors crucial to weather and climate forecasting, including aerosols, clouds and sea-level rise. At NOAA, preliminary plans call for the cancellation of a programme to build and launch new weather satellites in geostationary orbits, which is a backbone of US weather-forecasting efforts. Trump would also remove climate instruments on future weather satellites, and end the long-standing agreement through which NASA launches NOAA’s weather satellites.Missions to VenusAmong the proposed cuts at NASA are two missions to the planet Venus, which was last visited by a NASA spacecraft in 1989. The DAVINCI mission would send a probe into the thick Venusian atmosphere, and the VERITAS mission would map the planet’s surface and interior using radar and other technologies. Planetary scientists have welcomed these long-overdue contributions to studying Earth’s nearest neighbour, which holds clues to the early evolution of the Solar System and has tantalizing, perhaps life-friendly chemistry in its clouds. Both missions are targeted for a launch in 2031 and are meant to cost less than $500 million each. But delays have contributed to mounting expenses; DAVINCI could cost $1.2 billion or more, according to one estimate.Space-traffic control systemSpace analysts say that the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit is growing rapidly and that a system for coordinating information about their positions is needed to avoid dangerous collisions. In 2018, the first Trump administration took steps towards establishing a civilian office for space-traffic control, moving much of the work away from the military. Now, the second Trump administration seems poised to shift the work to an unspecified entity outside the government, and to pare down the budget for the office that runs it from $65 million to $10 million.It’s unclear whether all of these proposed cuts, for the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October, will happen.Whenever a US president releases a budget proposal, it signals their priorities. Congress, which has the ultimate say on spending, typically adjusts the president’s proposed budget to reflect its own preferences, and then passes final spending legislation. During Trump’s first term, Congress sometimes rejected his requests to cut science funding drastically. But this year, the first of Trump’s second administration, norms are being upended as the president’s team slashes billions of dollars in federal grants, defying Congress’s funding mandates. Republican lawmakers are also falling in line with Trump’s priorities more than they have done in the past.Trump might not need to wait for a fiscal 2026 budget to be approved to move forward with his plans. In an unusual move, when the Republican-controlled Congress enacted the final 2025 spending bill last month, it granted the Trump administration considerable leeway in how it spends the remaining budget for the current fiscal year, which runs until September. That bill contained top-line budget numbers for agencies, but lacked most of the detailed instructions that normally tell agencies which programmes they should put the money toward. For this reason, some scientists say that there is nothing to stop the Trump administration from halting funds for climate research and other programmes once the official spending plan for 2025 is finalized later this month.“They can do a lot of damage in the remainder of fiscal 2025,” says Waleed Abdalati, who leads the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a partnership between NOAA and the University of Colorado Boulder. “And they would be within their rights, because Congress ceded that authority.”This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on April 14, 2025.