President Donald Trump hammers a gavel after signing the One Massive Stunning Invoice Act on the South Garden of the White Home, Friday, July 4, 2025, through the 4th of July picnic. Credit score: The White Home/Daniel Torok
- The “One Massive Stunning Invoice” gave NASA an additional $9.9 billion for Artemis.
- This funding extends Artemis packages by way of 2032, together with SLS and Orion.
- The invoice additionally funds ISS operations and upgrades to NASA services.
- “I consider the SLS and current Artemis structure symbolize the quickest solution to get American astronauts again to the Moon. However over the long run, it’s not a sustainable or inexpensive resolution.” stated Jared Isaacman.
When President Donald Trump signed the “One Massive Stunning Invoice” into law on July 4, an modification to the laws launched by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) supplied NASA with extra funding past the usual fiscal yr 2025 finances. This more money — round $9.9 billion — is meant to assist key packages like Artemis, the Space Launch System (SLS), and Orion over the approaching years, making certain funding by way of 2032.
FY 2026 finances proposal took a distinct path
In March 2025, the Trump administration launched its FY 2026 budget proposal, which took a markedly completely different method to Artemis funding. The plan known as for retiring the SLS and Orion spacecraft after Artemis 3 — the primary deliberate crewed lunar touchdown since Apollo 17 — and canceling the Gateway lunar outpost. This signaled a shift towards growing reliance on business partnerships whereas scaling again NASA’s conventional heavy-lift and crewed spacecraft packages.
The transfer to denationalise lunar missions has backing from specialists like Jared Isaacman, a non-public astronaut and house entrepreneur. Throughout his Senate Committee nomination hearing on April 9, 2025, Isaacman stated, “I consider the SLS and current Artemis structure symbolize the quickest solution to get American astronauts again to the Moon. However over the long run, it’s not a sustainable or inexpensive resolution.” He famous that business launch suppliers like SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, and Rocket Lab are driving innovation and lowering prices. Isaacman prompt that NASA ought to finally shift its focus away from competing with personal business on launch autos and as an alternative think about next-generation spacecraft applied sciences, reminiscent of nuclear propulsion.
Regardless of the finances’s cost-cutting method, the reconciliation invoice directs almost $10 billion to maintain SLS and Orion funded for Artemis missions 4 and 5. This consists of $4.1 billion particularly allotted for the Area Launch System, with a mandated minimal of $1.025 billion per yr from FY 2026 by way of FY 2029 to cowl procurement, transportation, and operation prices. The invoice additionally units apart $20 million to fund the Orion spacecraft for Artemis 4 and subsequent missions. Moreover, it preserves $2.6 billion for the Gateway lunar outpost, requiring a minimum of $750 million to be spent on the mission throughout FY 2026 by way of FY 2028, making certain the continuation of this worldwide cooperative endeavor.
By signing the invoice on July 4, President Trump successfully endorsed the elevated NASA spending, although his stance on this shift from his authentic finances proposal stays unclear.
Cruz pushes Moon mission amid China’s lunar ambitions
Cruz, who performed a key position in securing the extra Artemis funding by way of a floor amendment, has repeatedly pressured the urgency of NASA’s lunar program. In a submit on April 7 on X (previously Twitter), he wrote, “The moon mission MUST occur in President Trump’s time period or else China will beat us there and construct the primary moonbase.” Reflecting this urgency, on the April affirmation listening to for Isaacman, Cruz warned, “We aren’t headed for the subsequent house race. It’s already right here. … I’m hard-pressed to think about a extra catastrophic mistake we may make in house than saying to communist China, ‘The Moon is yours.’”
Cruz’s insistence aligns with broader issues about what some are calling a second house race marked by China’s rising ambitions in house, particularly its plans to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. Former NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson summed up the geopolitical stakes in a 2023 POLITICO interview: “It’s a truth: we’re in an area race. And it’s true that we higher be careful that they don’t get to a spot on the moon beneath the guise of scientific analysis. And it’s not past the realm of chance that they are saying, ‘Maintain out, we’re right here, that is our territory.’”
NASA faces important technical and scheduling challenges in returning to the moon. Delays to Artemis 2 and three — together with points with the Orion warmth protect through the uncrewed Artemis 1 check flight — have pushed timelines again. In December 2024, NASA delayed Artemis 2 from its authentic September 2025 launch date to April 2026, and Artemis 3 from September 2026 to mid-2027. These delays increase questions on when the U.S. can realistically return astronauts to the lunar floor, and whether or not it will probably beat China to the Moon.
Artemis prices stay unclear regardless of funding enhance
The Artemis program has lengthy drawn bipartisan criticism for its murky price ticket. “Until we all know what that is going to value on the finish, it will be irresponsible for us to take step one,” stated Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.) during a 2019 budget hearing, expressing frustration over the dearth of clear monetary planning.
President Trump has additionally voiced skepticism, posting on X in June 2019: “For all the cash we’re spending, NASA ought to NOT be speaking about going to the Moon — We did that fifty years in the past.” A January 2024 Government Accountability Office report once more flagged transparency points, noting, “NASA hasn’t established an official value estimate for Artemis III, so full mission prices aren’t clear.”
Regardless of these issues, the One Massive Stunning Invoice alerts a bipartisan consensus inside Congress that lunar exploration is a nationwide precedence and that Artemis stays on the coronary heart of that imaginative and prescient.
ISS and NASA services get main investments
Past Artemis, the invoice invests closely in NASA’s getting older infrastructure and the way forward for low-Earth-orbit operations. It supplies $1.25 billion in funding for the Worldwide Area Station (ISS), with a mandate that a minimum of $250 million be allotted yearly from FY 2025 by way of FY 2029. This stands in sharp distinction to the White Home’s FY 2026 finances request, which proposes steep cuts to each ISS operations and onboard analysis.
The laws allocates $325 million to satisfy a recently announced contract with SpaceX for the event of the U.S. Deorbit Automobile, a spacecraft designed to securely deorbit the ISS and information it to a managed reentry over the Pacific Ocean on the finish of its service life in 2030.
Individually, the invoice consists of $1 billion for facility upgrades throughout NASA’s main crewed spaceflight facilities, together with $300 million for the Johnson Area Middle in Houston, $250 million for the Kennedy Area Middle in Florida, $120 million for the Stennis Area Middle in Mississippi, $100 million for the Marshall Area Flight Middle in Alabama, and $30 million for the Michoud Meeting Facility in Louisiana.
Plan to maneuver shuttle Discovery attracts criticism
The invoice additionally features a controversial provision to relocate the retired house shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian’s Nationwide Air and Area Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Middle in Virginia to Area Middle Houston. This proposal, championed by U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, goals to focus on Houston’s historic position in NASA’s human spaceflight program.
Cruz said, “Bringing such a historic house car to the area would underscore town’s indispensable contributions to our house missions, spotlight the power of America’s business house partnerships, and encourage future generations of engineers, scientists, and pioneers who will carry our legacy of American management in house.”
Nevertheless, the transfer has confronted criticism from former NASA officers. Lori Garver, who served because the company’s deputy administrator beneath President Obama, wrote on X, “We must take the Shuttle aside to maneuver it at this level. The plane transport was decommissioned and it wouldn’t maintain up that distance on a barge or freeway (bridges/bushes/energy traces). If that is the precedence for our tax {dollars}, we’re doomed.”
NASA science nonetheless hangs within the stability
Whereas the One Massive Stunning Invoice represents a lifeline for the Artemis program, it doesn’t deal with the sweeping cuts beneath President Trump’s FY2026 finances request to NASA science. The administration’s finances comprises a 47 % minimize to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, which, if enacted, would put greater than 40 lively and future missions prone to cancellation. The Planetary Society has known as such an end result an “extinction-level occasion” for U.S. house science.
Congress can nonetheless intervene by way of the conventional appropriations course of, which determines annual funding for companies like NASA. The One Massive Stunning Invoice is, in political parlance, a reconciliation invoice — a particular process that fast-tracks sure tax and necessary spending measures with a easy majority vote.
Committees within the Home and Senate will now flip their consideration to the common appropriations course of, which units the funding ranges for federal companies every fiscal yr. This implies lawmakers nonetheless have the chance to revive or modify the proposed science cuts — although whether or not they’ll find yourself doing so stays unsure.
New funding secures Artemis, however questions stay
Taken collectively, the invoice shores up Artemis at a second when its future appears to be like more and more unsure. The political message is evident: Congress is prepared to commit long-term funding to Artemis, whilst critics say this system is floundering.
Whether or not that imaginative and prescient holds — or will get pulled off target by technical setbacks, shifting political winds, or budgetary tradeoffs — will assist form not simply the Artemis timeline, however NASA’s trajectory for the subsequent decade.
