NASA logo broken in half by a deep crack.
Credit: The Planetary Society; CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

The White House’s FY 2026 budget request for NASA proposes a radical shift in the agency’s direction, proposing extinction-level cuts to space science, severe cuts in other program areas and a dramatic pivot of human spaceflight focus to Mars.

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Casey Dreier is director of advocacy for the Planetary Society.