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The bill also takes a measured step toward addressing NASA’s workforce crisis. The report supports the new \u201cNASA Force\u201d effort to rebuild the agency’s core competencies, language that amounts to an acknowledgment that 2025 was a damaging year for NASA. More than 4,000 civil servants were pressured to leave during the leadership vacuum that preceded Isaacman’s confirmation, and thousands more contractors were laid off or shifted off NASA work as the agency began implementing OMB’s rejected FY 2026 budget request before Congress could act. The institutional knowledge they took with them is, in many cases, irreplaceable. The report’s recognition that “the strength and expertise of NASA’s civil servant and contractor workforce is the primary driver of U.S. leadership in aerospace” is the closest Congress has come to saying out loud what was obvious to anyone watching the agency last year. The bill does not appropriate dedicated funds for workforce restoration, but its signal matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finally, the bill keeps the two most popular elements of the Office of STEM Engagement \u2014 EPSCoR ($26 million) and Space Grant ($58 million) \u2014 but moves them into the Safety, Security, and Mission Services account, rather than restoring OSTEM as a standalone office. The shift preserves the programs that Members raised most forcefully in the hearings, while leaving other projects without a clear funding home.<\/p>\n
The 17% cut to SMD is the bill’s central weakness. Even when individual missions are insulated by report-language floors, the directorate’s overall capacity to support operating missions, research and analysis grants, technology development, and the formulation of future missions is diminished. The Committee affirms the importance of the decadal surveys in multiple places, yet the dollars do not necessarily match the rhetoric.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s current Discovery Program projects \u2014 VERITAS, DAVINCI, and the VenSAR contribution to ESA\u2019s EnVision \u2014 do not get the same protections that other planetary missions receive. These Venus missions have been repeatedly targeted for cancellation by OMB, and they face a similar cancellation-by-omission as 50 other space science projects [LINK]. The Senate provided funding for the Venus missions in their funding bill last year, and it made it into the final version passed in January, so there\u2019s still time to include these in the FY 2027 budget. Regardless, their omission from the mission-specific language in the House report is a real challenge that planetary science advocates should press on before Congress passes the final funding bill.<\/p>\n
The bill is also silent on\u00a0Mars Sample Return. The recommendation includes $300 million for Mars Exploration, which encompasses the Mars Future Missions line, but the amount is insufficient to underwrite a restructured MSR campaign. Restoring Mars Sample Return in a more affordable form is a stated priority of the science community, was funded by the previous Congress with $110 million in FY 2026 to buy down technical risk, and is something Administrator Isaacman has said he wants to pursue. With China openly\u00a0preparing to return the first Mars samples by the early 2030s, the absence of a clear MSR commitment in this bill is a strategic gap, not just a programmatic one. The sample tubes Perseverance is filling on Mars are American taxpayer investments. Whether they ever come back to Earth, and whether American scientists are the first to study them, depends on choices that have not yet been made.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Programmatic balance has long been a congressional and community priority for NASA. However, this bill does not provide that balance. The $1.14 billion increase to Exploration is more than offset by the $1.25 billion cut to Science. Artemis, already the recipient of significant supplemental funding through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, grows again here at the cost of Science and other program areas. That approach is unsustainable and is opposed by exploration and science advocates alike. A NASA that wins on the Moon but retreats from the rest of the Solar System is not the NASA Congress has built over six decades. Sending a message about the importance of NASA as a whole means funding the agency as a whole, not pitting its directorates against each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The National Science Foundation takes a significant hit to its budget, as well. The Committee recommends $7.0 billion, which is $1.75 billion below the FY 2026 enacted level, with research activities cut by $736.0 million. The contrast with NASA is sharp: where NASA’s topline holds flat with the harm concentrated in one directorate, NSF is cut across the agency. Alongside the recent decision by the White House to terminate all 22 members of the independent National Science Board, the broader federal science enterprise is not faring as well as the NASA appropriations narrative might suggest. This situation spurred many in the science community, including more than 3,000 scientists and science-focused organizations \u2014 including The Planetary Society \u2014 to\u00a0take action to oppose the recent NSB decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n