NASA dodged Trump's worst cuts. Scientists say what's left is still devastating.

A congressional panel has voted to advance a spending bill that funds NASA, rejecting the White House’s proposal to cut the agency nearly in half but still imposing a significant reduction on the science programs that underpin Colorado’s aerospace economy and university research base.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2027 NASA request would have cut the agency’s discretionary budget from $24.4 billion, enacted in fiscal year 2026, to $18.8 billion, with the deepest reductions aimed at the agency’s science programs. Those parts of NASA’s mission would have seen a cut of more than 46%, according to NASA’s most recent budget estimates table.

The bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee keeps NASA’s overall budget flat at $24.4 billion, but, within that topline, it cuts NASA’s Science Mission Directorate by 17%, from $7.3 billion to $6 billion.

Colorado research at stake

The White House request would have reduced NASA’s investments in scientific research and exploration by more than $3 billion. At the same time, it would have increased spending on exploration, the account that supports human deep space programs, by $700 million.

Massimo Ruzzene, University of Colorado Boulder’s vice chancellor for research and innovation, said the proposed science cuts would reach active university missions and future opportunities.

“It would mean the inability of CU Boulder to maintain critical missions that we have that are funded by NASA,” Ruzzene said, naming the Parker Solar Probe, Europa Clipper, and the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe among missions connected to the university. “And then we wouldn’t be able to propose new missions or participate in new missions.”

CU Boulder’s federal research expenditures totaled nearly $738 million in fiscal year 2026, according to the university’s research office, and the university’s budget describes the research outlook as “unusually unpredictable.”

Ruzzene said continuity matters, because missions, laboratories and workforces do not turn on and off easily. He said the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission, known as MAVEN, has been important to the university and that mission changes can force a lab to redeploy people, protect capabilities and seek new sources of support.

NASA said March 4 that an anomaly review board, convened in mid-February, was evaluating recovery efforts for MAVEN, which was last heard from Dec. 6. The board also was assessing the spacecraft’s probable state and the likelihood of recovery.

NASA’s MAVEN updates reviewed for this story did not report restored contact with the spacecraft after that March 4 update.

“Continuity is what really ensures that we can maintain our capabilities and the people that we need to have in our workforce,” Ruzzene said. “We’re seeing some challenges in recruitment of grad students, for sure.”

The university’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, known as LASP, shows the breadth of Colorado’s NASA ties. Its portfolio spans Mars atmospheric research through MAVEN, outer solar system work through New Horizons and Europa Clipper, solar physics through the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Earth and space weather observations, small satellites, and data systems.

Data from USAspending.gov show more than $1 billion in obligated NASA prime contract dollars tied to the University of Colorado, including work on the MAVEN Mars mission, solar irradiance instruments, and the Libera Earth radiation instrument.

Colorado State University received about $55.7 million in NASA assistance awards, including research on wildfire modeling, tropical water cycles and satellite observations, along with about $9.8 million for the Investigation of Convective Updrafts mission.

A CSU spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment before publication. A Colorado School of Mines spokesperson directed Newsline to submit a public records request for information about NASA contracts.

Aerospace economy and mission pipeline

The university impacts sit inside a larger Colorado aerospace economy. The state has more than 2,000 aerospace businesses, more than 55,000 direct aerospace employees and more than 184,000 indirect employees tied to the sector. NASA is only one part of that economy, which also depends on defense, the Air Force, the Space Force, federal laboratories, and commercial companies.

Bob Cone, chief operating officer of Westminster-based Advanced Space, said Colorado’s aerospace footprint is unusually concentrated along the Front Range. He argued that industry needs both human spaceflight and robotic exploration, even though those programs compete for attention and dollars.

“I think most people in industry feel that we need both human space flight and robotics exploration,” Cone said. “Stability is key to doing any of this development work in an effective way.”

The United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral on Nov. 18, 2013. MAVEN was the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. (Photo courtesy of NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Parker White, director of government affairs for the Colorado Competitive Council at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, pointed out that defense budgets, not NASA’s, set the baseline for most of Colorado’s aerospace sector. White said federal funding from NASA and other agencies is nevertheless a critical part of Colorado’s aerospace ecosystem.

“Being able to maintain sector growth that we have seen over the last two years, and that we would like to continue to see, will be dependent on the federal government continuing to invest in aerospace and defense innovation,” White said.

Colorado Newsline reported in February that federal science funds were a lifeline for Colorado aerospace, with companies depending on multiyear spacecraft development cycles, university talent pipelines and predictable federal budgets.

Congress and Colorado’s delegation draw different lines

The vote this month makes the NASA-related spending bill the first such fiscal year 2027 measure to clear a full appropriations committee, which is a milestone with an immediate practical consequence. Under Office of Management and Budget rules, if fiscal year 2027 begins under a continuing resolution — a common outcome when Congress has not enacted final spending bills by Oct. 1 — agencies are funded at the lower of the levels provided in the most recent House and Senate appropriations bills. The Planetary Society noted that the committee vote “forecloses one of OMB’s most aggressive options” to implement deeper cuts unilaterally during any funding gap.

Within its flat NASA topline, while the bill cuts the Science Mission Directorate by more than $1 billion it increases Exploration by $1.1 billion to $8.9 billion.

Colin Hamill, public policy fellow at the American Astronomical Society, said the House bill is a meaningful improvement over the White House request but still represents a net loss.

“While this is much better than the around 50% cuts that were recommended by the president’s budget requests, this would still be a loss for the scientific community of the United States,” Hamill said. He noted that the House has now recommended cuts of roughly that magnitude to NASA Science and to the National Science Foundation for the second consecutive year, and he said the AAS is pushing the Senate for flat funding at minimum.

Rep. Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican and the Commerce, Justice, Science Subcommittee chairman, said at the full committee markup that the bill “maintains strong funding levels for NASA.”

Rogers’ view reflects one held by some appropriators that human spaceflight represents NASA’s most strategically important work and the area where American competition with China is most visible. Science advocates dispute that perspective, arguing that robotic missions, Earth observation, and heliophysics programs are not secondary to human spaceflight but instead are foundational to it.

Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse, whose district includes Boulder, hews to a sharper line. He pointed to NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the broader federal science system and said Congress must resist cuts to NASA.

“Congress has and must continue to reject these short-sighted proposals on a bipartisan basis,” Neguse said in a statement, “including by standing firmly against” the proposed cut.

Neguse also said he would “use every tool available to protect vital institutions like NCAR in Boulder,” referring to the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and has called for a federal inspector general investigation into alleged changes to NCAR’s space weather program.

Democratic U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado said he regards the NASA debate against the backdrop of the state’s aerospace economy and scientific workforce.

“Colorado’s aerospace industry is a powerhouse of innovation that drives breakthrough discoveries, cutting-edge research, and tens of thousands of jobs,” Hickenlooper said in a statement. “We’ll be fighting tooth and nail to make sure NASA’s critical work is fully funded so we can continue to lead the world in research about space and life on Earth.”

Hickenlooper’s office provided his comments in a written statement, but his amendments to the NASA Authorization Act of 2026, which the Senate Commerce Committee advanced in March, offer a more concrete measure of Colorado’s stake in the debate than any floor speech.

One amendment would require NASA to continue space weather research on solar flares, solar energetic particles and galactic cosmic rays and to use that research in planning for moon to Mars missions, including astronaut safety, radiation shielding and protection of communications and navigation infrastructure.

Hickenlooper also secured requirements for NASA to modernize space communications, launch completed science hardware manifested for the International Space Station when practicable, and apply human-rating safety standards to commercial transportation in the region of space between Earth and the moon. His office said the ISS hardware provision includes LASP-developed instruments and that the safety amendment would create consistent standards for vessels developed by Colorado companies.

Mission cuts and what’s unresolved

The Planetary Society reported in April that more than 80 NASA science missions may be endangered by the Trump proposal, after comparing the fiscal year 2027 request line by line with prior-year budget documents to identify omitted missions. NASA has not publicly verified that count, and Scientific American reported in April that NASA declined to comment on the analysis.

Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, said the lack of detail complicated Congress’ work.

“NASA has still not provided a full accounting of canceled missions to Congress,” Dreier said.

Meanwhile, Fran Bagenal, a CU Boulder and LASP planetary scientist involved with New Horizons and other missions, said older spacecraft can still return valuable science after most of the cost of building and launching them has already been spent.

“Just taking a hatchet to active space missions is the wrong approach,” Bagenal said. “We inspired a bunch of kids to do their math homework, to get trained in science and engineering, to get technical jobs,” she said, pointing to the public engagement value of missions like New Horizons.

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposes a 10% cut across non-defense spending, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Ruzzene said CU Boulder is concerned about cuts to federal support for research and development, while Bagenal noted that LASP’s work also intersects with NSF and NOAA.

The Senate is expected to act on its own spending bill in June. History suggests that is where NASA Science has its best chance to recover ground. In fiscal year 2026, the Senate provided more generous science funding than the House, and the final enacted numbers landed closer to the Senate position.

For the state’s aerospace economy, the issue is not one mission or one company. It is whether the federal government will remain a reliable partner on timelines long enough for spacecraft to be designed, built and flown. And whether Colorado’s universities, contractors and students can afford to keep betting that it will.