June 3, 20258 min readWhite House Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space ScienceScientists are rallying to reverse ruinous proposed cuts to both NASA and the National Science FoundationBy Nadia Drake edited by Lee BillingsFog shrouds the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in this photograph from February 25, 2025. Gregg Newton/AFP via GettyLate last week the Trump Administration released its detailed budget request for fiscal year 2026 —a request that, if enacted, would be the equivalent of carpet-bombing the national scientific enterprise.“This is a profound, generational threat to scientific leadership in the United States,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. “If implemented, it would fundamentally undermine and potentially devastate the most unique capabilities that the U.S. has built up over a half-century.”The Trump administration’s proposal, which still needs to be approved by Congress, is sure to ignite fierce resistance from scientists and senators alike. Among other agencies, the budget deals staggering blows to NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which together fund the majority of U.S. research in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, heliophysics and Earth science —all space-related sciences that have typically mustered hearty bipartisan support.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.The NSF supports ground-based astronomy, including such facilities as the Nobel Prize–winning gravitational-wave detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), globe-spanning arrays of radio telescopes, and cutting-edge observatories that stretch from Hawaii to the South Pole. The agency faces a lethal 57 percent reduction to its $9-billion budget, with deep cuts to every program except those in President Trump’s priority areas, which include artificial intelligence and quantum information science. NASA, which funds space-based observatories, faces a 25 percent reduction, dropping the agency’s $24.9-billion budget to $18.8 billion. The proposal beefs up efforts to send humans to the moon and to Mars, but the agency’s Science Mission Directorate —home to Mars rovers, the Voyager interstellar probes, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the Hubble Space Telescope, and much more —is looking at a nearly 50 percent reduction, with dozens of missions canceled, turned off or operating on a starvation diet.“It’s an end-game scenario for science at NASA,” says Joel Parriott, director of external affairs and public policy at the American Astronomical Society. “It’s not just the facilities. You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.”Adding to the chaos, on Saturday President Trump announced that billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman was no longer his pick for NASA administrator—just days before the Senate was set to confirm Isaacman’s nomination. Initial reports—which have now been disputed—explained the president’s decision as stemming from his discovery that Isaacman recently donated money to Democratic candidates. Regardless of the true reason, the decision leaves both NASA and the NSF, whose director abruptly resigned in April, with respective placeholder “acting” leaders at the top. That leadership vacuum significantly weakens the agencies’ ability to fight the proposed budget cuts and advocate for themselves. “What’s more inefficient than a rudderless agency without an empowered leadership?” Dreier asks.Actions versus WordsDuring his second administration, President Trump has repeatedly celebrated U.S. leadership in space. When he nominated Isaacman last December, Trump noted “NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration” and looked to a future of “groundbreaking achievements in space science, technology and exploration.” More recently, while celebrating Hubble’s 35th anniversary in April, Trump called the telescope “a symbol of America’s unmatched exploratory might” and declared that NASA would “continue to lead the way in fueling the pursuit of space discovery and exploration.” The administration’s budgetary actions speak louder than Trump’s words, however. Instead of ushering in a new golden age of space exploration—or even setting up the U.S. to stay atop the podium—the president’s budget “narrows down what the cosmos is to moon and Mars and pretty much nothing else,” Dreier says. “And the cosmos is a lot bigger, and there’s a lot more to learn out there.”Dreier notes that when corrected for inflation, the overall NASA budget would be the lowest it’s been since 1961. But in April of that year, the Soviet Union launched the first human into orbit, igniting a space race that swelled NASA’s budget and led to the Apollo program putting American astronauts on the moon. Today China’s rapidprogress and enormous ambitions in space would make the moment ripe for a 21st-century version of this competition, with the U.S. generously funding its own efforts to maintain pole position. Instead the White House’s budget would do the exact opposite.“The seesaw is sort of unbalanced,” says Tony Beasley, director of the NSF-funded National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). “On the one side, we’re saying, ‘Well, China’s kicking our ass, and we need to do something about that.’ But then we’re not going to give any money to anything that might actually do that.”How NASA will achieve a crewed return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars—goals that the agency now considers part of “winning the second space race”—while also maintaining its leadership in science is unclear.“This is Russ Vought’s budget,” Dreier says, referring to the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an unelected bureaucrat who has been notorious for his efforts to reshape the U.S. government by weaponizing federal funding. “This isn’t even Trump’s budget. Trump’s budget would be good for space. This one undermines the president’s own claims and ambitions when it comes to space.”“Low Expectations” at the High FrontierRumors began swirling about the demise of NASA science in April, when a leaked OMB document described some of the proposed cuts and cancellations. Those included both the beleaguered, bloated Mars Sample Return (MSR) program and the on-time, on-budget Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the next astrophysics flagship mission.The top-line numbers in the more fleshed-out proposal are consistent with that document, and MSR would still be canceled. But Roman would be granted a stay of execution: rather than being zeroed out, it would be put on life support.“It’s a reprieve from outright termination, but it’s still a cut for functionally no reason,” Dreier says. “In some ways, [the budget] is slightly better than I was expecting. But I had very low expectations.”In the proposal, many of the deepest cuts would be made to NASA science, which would sink from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Earth science missions focused on carbon monitoring and climate change, as well as programs aimed at education and workforce diversity, would be effectively erased by the cuts. But a slew of high-profile planetary science projects would suffer, too, with cancellations proposed for two future Venus missions, the Juno mission that is currently surveilling Jupiter, the New Horizons mission that flew by Pluto and two Mars orbiters. (The Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan would survive, as would the flagship Europa Clipper spacecraft, which launched last October.) NASA’s international partnerships in planetary science fare poorly, too, as the budget rescinds the agency’s involvement with multiple European-led projects, including a Venus mission and Mars rover.The proposal is even worse for NASA astrophysics—the study of our cosmic home—which “really takes it to the chin,” Dreier says, with a roughly $1-billion drop to just $523 million. In the president’s proposal, only three big astrophysics missions would survive: the soon-to-launch Roman and the already-operational Hubble and JWST. The rest of NASA’s active astrophysics missions, which include the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), would be severely pared back or zeroed out. Additionally, the budget would nix NASA’s contributions to large European missions, such as a future space-based gravitational-wave observatory.“This is the most powerful fleet of missions in the history of the study of astrophysics from space,” says John O’Meara, chief scientist at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and co-chair of a recent senior review panel that evaluated NASA’s astrophysics missions. The report found that each reviewed mission “continues to be capable of producing important, impactful science.” This fleet, O’Meara adds, is more than the sum of its parts, with much of its power emerging from synergies among multiple telescopes that study the cosmos in many different types, or wavelengths, of light.By hollowing out NASA’s science to ruthlessly focus on crewed missions, the White House budget might be charitably viewed as seeking to rekindle a heroic age of spaceflight—with China’s burgeoning space program as the new archrival. But even for these supposedly high-priority initiatives, the proposed funding levels appear too anemic and meager to give the U.S. any competitive edge. For example, the budget directs about $1 billion to new technology investments to support crewed Mars missions while conservative estimates have projected that such voyages would cost hundreds of billions of dollars more.“It cedes U.S. leadership in space science at a time when other nations, particularly China, are increasing their ambitions,” Dreier says. “It completely flies in the face of the president’s own stated goals for American leadership in space.”Undermining the FoundationThe NSF’s situation, which one senior space scientist predicted would be “diabolical” when the NASA numbers leaked back in April, is also unsurprisingly dire. Unlike NASA, which is focused on space science and exploration, the NSF’s programs span the sweep of scientific disciplines, meaning that even small, isolated cuts—let alone the enormous ones that the budget has proposed—can have shockingly large effects on certain research domains.“Across the different parts of the NSF, the programs that are upvoted are the president’s strategic initiatives, but then everything else gets hit,” Beasley says.Several large-scale NSF-funded projects would escape more or less intact. Among these are the panoramic Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scheduled to unveil its first science images later this month, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope. The budget also moves the Giant Magellan Telescope, which would boast starlight-gathering mirrors totaling more than 25 meters across, into a final design phase. All three of those facilities take advantage of Chile’s pristine dark skies. Other large NSF-funded projects that would survive include the proposed Next Generation Very Large Array of radio telescopes in New Mexico and several facilities at the South Pole, such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory.If this budget is enacted, however, NSF officials anticipate only funding a measly 7 percent of research proposals overall rather than 25 percent; the number of graduate research fellowships awarded would be cleaved in half, and postdoctoral fellowships in the physical sciences would drop to zero. NRAO’s Green Bank Observatory — home to the largest steerable single-dish radio telescope on the planet — would likely shut down. So would other, smaller observatories in Arizona and Chile. The Thirty Meter Telescope, a humongous, perennially embattled project with no clear site selection, would be canceled. And the budget proposes closing one of the two gravitational-wave detectors used by the LIGO collaboration—whose observations of colliding black holes earned the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics—even though both detectors need to be online for LIGO’s experiment to work. Even factoring in other operational detectors, such as Virgo in Europe and the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA) in Japan, shutting down half of LIGO would leave a gaping blind spot in humanity’s gravitational-wave view of the heavens.“The consequences of this budget are that key scientific priorities, on the ground and in space, will take at least a decade longer—or not be realized at all,” O’Meara says. “The universe is telling its story at all wavelengths. It doesn’t care what you build, but if you want to hear that story, you must build many things.”Dreier, Parriott and others are anticipating fierce battles on Capitol Hill. And already both Democratic and Republican legislators have issued statement signaling that they won’t support the budget request as is. “This sick joke of a budget is a nonstarter,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, ranking member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, in a recent statement. And in an earlier statement, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations, cautioned that “the President’s Budget Request is simply one step in the annual budget process.”The Trump administration has “thrown a huge punch here, and there will be a certain back-reaction, and we’ll end up in the middle somewhere,” Beasley says. “The mistake you can make right now is to assume that this represents finalized decisions and the future—because it doesn’t.”

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Earth and space mingle in stunning ways for the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year contest. From the “geological masterpiece” of Coyote Buttes, Utah to the sandstone terrain of desolate Ennedi, Chad to a lava-spewing volcano in Guatemala, this year’s entries dazzle from all corners of the globe. We even get a view of the Milky Way from off-planet with a photograph from NASA astronaut Don Pettit taken aboard the International Space Station. “The Wave”Coyote Buttes, UT, USAOne of my greatest passions is visiting stunning natural wonders and paying my personal tribute to them through night photography. This image was taken at Coyote Buttes, a geological masterpiece located in Arizona, where special access permits are required to protect it for future generations.Despite the intense cold during those days, it was incredibly exciting to visit the great sandstone wave for the first time and enjoy its spectacular shapes and colors.To capture this 360° panorama, I planned for the Milky Way and focused on creating a balanced photographic composition. It’s hard to put into words the beauty of this place, but I hope my photograph manages to convey it.Credit: Luis Cajete / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill The Milky Way contains an estimated 200-400 billion stars, but we can only see a fraction of the celestial bodies with our naked eyes. Photography opens up the skies to the staggering light show floating around us. (Click to enlarge images.) “Echiwile Arch” Ennedi, ChadWhen one first Googles information about visiting Chad, the results aren’t very encouraging from a safety perspective. Nevertheless, the intrepid astrophotographer in me decided to take the chance and visit this landlocked country, specifically the Ennedi Massif in the north.Sparsely populated and completely devoid of light pollution, the three-day drive from the capital, N’Djamena, was well worth the troubles and risks involved. The region is filled with numerous rock formations, shapes, and arches, offering an abundance of options for foreground elements to frame the dramatic night skies. Seen here is a small arch in the shape of a hoof in the Ennedi region.Credit: Vikas Chander / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Fortress of Light”Jujuy, ArgentinaSince I started shooting the night sky, I’ve always sought out landscapes that feel like they belong to another planet — remote, untouched, and far from light pollution. That’s exactly what I found in “The Cathedral,” a surreal rock formation in Jujuy, Argentina.Photographing at over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) presented its challenges, but when I arrived and saw the rock formations, I was completely blown away. The landscape felt like something from a fantasy world, and the towering cliffs instantly reminded me of a giant stone fortress sculpted by nature.As twilight gave way to full darkness, the core of the Milky Way appeared high overhead, shining with incredible clarity. I patiently waited as the galactic center slowly descended toward the horizon, perfectly aligning above the cliffs.While capturing the panorama, the camera picked up bands of orange and green airglow, adding a unique glow to the horizon.This image captures everything I love about photographing the Milky Way — the silence of remote places, the peace of standing under a pristine sky, and the deep connection I feel to the moment, fully present and grateful to witness it.Credit: Mauricio Salazar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “The Night Guardians” Easter Island, ChileEaster Island had been on my bucket list for a long time, and it once seemed almost impossible to reach. On our first night there, the weather forecast looked promising, so we decided to go ahead with the tour our group had booked 4–5 months earlier. However, Rapa Nui sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where the weather is notoriously unpredictable. When we woke up at 3 a.m. in our hotel, the sky was completely covered in clouds. Still, we decided to take the risk, knowing the forecast for the next few nights was even worse.An hour later, we were frantically photographing the statues at Rano Raraku—the quarry where nearly all of the island’s 900 statues were carved—when the sky suddenly began to clear. By 5 a.m., it was completely clear, and we had less than two hours to capture all the shots we wanted. We felt incredibly lucky to be in the right place at the right time.Credit: Rositsa Dimitrova / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Blossom”Hehuan Mountain Dark Sky Park, TaiwanAfter three years of waiting, the Yushan alpine rhododendrons are finally in bloom once again on Taiwan’s 3,000-meter-high Hehuan Mountain. On this special night, distant clouds helped block city light pollution, revealing an exceptionally clear view of the Milky Way. A solar flare from active region AR3664 reached Earth that evening, intensifying the airglow and adding an otherworldly touch to the sky.Together, these rare natural events created a breathtaking scene—vivid blooms glowing softly beneath a star-filled sky.Credit: Ethan Su / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Spines and Starlight”Kanaan, NamibiaOn our second Namibia Photography Tour, we began our journey once again at one of our favorite spots in Kanaan. Last year was an incredible experience, but this time, we decided to explore more of this vast land.During a scouting trip, I stumbled upon the perfect composition—two quiver trees standing tall with a large cactus in the foreground, all beautifully aligned with the Milky Way. I had always wanted to capture the Milky Way alongside a big cactus, so in that moment, it felt like a special gift.Getting everything in focus was a bit challenging, as I had to get extremely close to the cactus without getting poked. To achieve perfect sharpness, I used focus stacking. Additionally, I shot with an astro-modified camera and a GNB Nebula filter to enhance the details of the night sky.Credit: Burak Esenbey / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Galaxy of the Stone Array” Moeraki Boulders, New ZealandThe Milky Way hangs over the sea. The night sky of the Southern Hemisphere condenses the poetry of Li Bai, a poet from China’s Tang Dynasty, into eternity. On a clear night, the Milky Way pours down over the sea like a waterfall from the sky, intertwining with the atmospheric glow on the water’s surface.Credit: Alvin Wu / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “One in a Billion ”ISS (International Space Station)I float in the Cupola, looking out the seven windows composing this faceted transparent jewel. While my mind is submerged in contemplation, my eyes gorge on the dim reflections from a nighttime Earth. There are over eight billion people that call this planet home. There are seven of us that can say the same for Space Station. What a privilege it is to be here. I used an orbital star tracker to take out the star streak motion from orbit.Credit: Don Pettit / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Winter Fairy Tale”Dobratsch Nature Park, AustriaUndoubtedly my wildest location this winter: Austria’s Dobratsch mountain! If I had to describe it in two words, it would be a “Winter Fairytale”!Despite a 5 a.m. work shift, I drove to Austria by 1 p.m., worried about my fitness and lack of sleep. After a 2-hour hike through the snow with a 22kg backpack and sled, the stunning views kept me energized.Arriving at the cabin (where I had planned my winter panorama two years ago), I was greeted by untouched snow, completely free of footprints. I spent the evening exploring compositions, and this is my favorite: a panorama of the winter Milky Way with reddish nebulae, stretching above Dobratsch Mountain.I captured the Zodiacal light and even the Gegenschein glow! The sky was magnificent, with Jupiter and Mars shining brightly. In the foreground is the cabin, where I spent 3 freezing hours (-12°C), waiting for the perfect shot of the Milky Way’s core. It turned out exactly as I envisioned—a true winter fairytale.Credit: Uroš Fink / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Valle de los Cactus” San Pedro de Atacama, ChileA panoramic shot of the Milky Way in a remote area of the Atacama Cactus Valley, known for its large concentration of cactus plants. I love this place with its countless possibilities. The panorama was taken just as the galactic center began to rise, with the spectacular Gum Nebula visible on the right.It was an especially bright night with a breathtaking sky. The valley isn’t easy to navigate, but it’s always worth trying to find new compositions in such stunning locations beneath the night sky.Credit: Pablo Ruiz / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Cosmic Fire”Volcán Acatenango, GuatemalaOn the early morning of June 2, 2024, I summited Acatenango Volcano for the first time, hoping to witness the fiery beauty of the neighboring Volcan de Fuego against the Milky Way’s backdrop. That night, the volcano was incredibly active—each thunderous explosion reverberated in my chest, while glowing lava illuminated the dark slopes. Above, the Milky Way stretched diagonally across the sky, a mesmerizing band of stars contrasting with the chaos below. As the volcano erupted, the ash plume rose vertically, forming an acute angle of about 45 degrees with the galaxy’s diagonal path, creating a stunning visual contrast between Earth’s fury and the cosmos’ serenity.Capturing this required a fast, wide-angle lens (f/2.8), an ISO of 3200, and a 10-second exposure to balance the volcanic glow with the starlight. The challenge was timing the shot during a new moon and aligning the right moment for the Milky Way to cross the frame next to the volcano. I used Lightroom as the editor. This image is special for its storytelling—the raw power of Volcan de Fuego meeting the tranquil expanse of the galaxy.Credit: Sergio Montúfar / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Lake RT5” Zanskar, HimalayasLake RT5 is a pristine alpine lake nestled at 5,700 meters above sea level. My passion has always been to capture the unseen Himalayas in their rawest form. This journey led us through rugged mountains and glaciers, where we discovered several unknown alpine lakes and named them along the way.We endured multiple nights in extremely cold, unpredictable conditions. Due to the ever-changing weather and limited time, I used a blue hour blend to achieve a cleaner foreground. Since my campsite was right beside the lake, I was able to capture the tracked sky shot from the exact same position later that night.I was in awe of the incredible airglow illuminating the Himalayan skies. The raw image had even more intense colors, but I toned them down to stay true to reality. This was undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable nights I’ve ever spent in the heart of the Himalayas.Credit: Tanay Das / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “A Stellar View From The Cave” Saint Raphael, FranceFramed by the rugged mouth of a coastal cave, this image captures the heart of the Milky Way rising over the Mediterranean Sea. Taken during the peak of the Galactic Core season last May, it blends the natural beauty of the foreground with the awe-inspiring vastness of the cosmos. A winding road, illuminated by passing cars, creates a dynamic trail of light that guides the eye toward the stars above.This photo is a reminder that magic often hides in the most unexpected places. All it takes is a little patience, planning, and passion.Credit: Anthony Lopez / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Boot Arch Perseids” Alabama Hills, CA, USAThe Perseid Meteor Shower occurs every August, raining down hundreds of meteors over a few nights. In 2024, I had planned to photograph it from the Canadian Rockies, but wildfires forced me to change my plans at the last minute. After checking wildfire maps, I found a safe haven in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.After three full nights of capturing meteors, I created this image. Sitting on the rock is my friend Arne, who often joins me on these adventures, gazing up at the magnificent core of our galaxy. Each meteor is painstakingly aligned to its true location in the night sky. The final depiction shows all the meteors I captured, combined into one frame—as if the Earth hadn’t been rotating and all the meteors had fallen at once.Credit: Mike Abramyan / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Starlit Ocean: A Comet, the setting Venus, the Milky Way, and McWay Falls” – California, USACapturing this image was a race against time, light, and distance. With Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS (C/2023 A3) making its approach, I knew I had a rare opportunity to see it with the naked eye before it faded into the cosmos. I embarked on a five-hour round trip to McWay Falls in Big Sur, one of the few Bortle 2 locations accessible along California’s coast. My window was narrow—just six precious minutes of true darkness before the Moon rose and washed out the night sky. But those six minutes were unforgettable.In that brief span, the Milky Way arched high above the Pacific, Venus shimmered as it set over the ocean, and the comet streaked quietly across the sky—a celestial visitor gracing this iconic coastal cove. The soft cascade of McWay Falls and the stillness of the starlit ocean created a surreal harmony between Earth and sky. It was one of the most vivid and humbling naked-eye comet sightings I’ve ever experienced—an alignment of cosmic elements that felt both fleeting and eternal.Credit: Xingyang Cai / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill “Diamond Beach Emerald Sky”Great Ocean Road, AustraliaWith a clear night forecast and the Milky Way core returning for 2025, I set out to explore the Great Ocean Road. After a few setbacks—such as a failed composition and getting the car stuck on a sandy track—I almost gave up. However, I pushed on and found a great spot above the beach to capture the scene.The night was full of color, with Comet C/2024 G3 Atlas and a pink aurora in the early hours, followed by the Milky Way rising amid intense green airglow near dawn. Despite the challenges, the reward of this stunning image and the memory of the view made it all worthwhile.Credit: Brent Martin / 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year Daniel Zafra Portill

Nature, Published online: 16 May 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01425-0A device involving solar panels and a gel produces substantial amounts of water in one of the world’s driest deserts.