Billions wasted, mysteries unsolved: The missions NASA may be forced to abandon

NASA stands at the brink. On April 25, 2025, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced a plan to cancel dozens of space missions — including spacecraft already paid for, launched, and making discoveries — as part of a devastating 47% cut to the agency’s science program. If enacted, the loss of these missions would plunge an entire scientific discipline into chaos and waste billions of taxpayer dollars. It would be like building the Apollo program, only to make Neil Armstrong come back to Earth before he could set foot on the Moon.

There is still time to save NASA science from this extinction-level event. We are encouraging Congress to reject the White House’s plan and organizing ways you can show elected officials that space science and exploration matter. Efforts like this have worked before to help keep space missions alive.

The first step is knowing what’s at stake. This is a guide to some of the many missions slated for cancellation, and the mysteries that would go unsolved if we turned our backs on them. 

All cancellations presented here have been directly sourced from the budget proposal and its reporting.

Mars Sample Return

The mission: Bring back the first samples from another planet, look for signs of life, and prepare for future crewed exploration of Mars.

Status: Phase 2 in development; Phase 1 launched and active

Launch dates: 2020, 2030, 2031 (proposed)

The NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return mission aims to bring pieces of Mars back to Earth, where we could see if they host signs of life. These samples would transform our understanding of Mars. They would shine light on whether the red planet has ever been inhabited, the details of its history, and what hazards it might pose to future astronauts. Their clues would help reveal how Mars, a world that once flowed with liquid water, has since dried up into a barren desert. 

This would be perhaps the most ambitious robotic space mission of all time. NASA and its international partners would have to land on Mars, load the samples onto a spacecraft, and then perform the first-ever rocket launch from the surface of another planet to get the samples back to Earth. If successful, this would mark a leap in capabilities that would revolutionize space exploration for decades to come.

Most of the samples have already been collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover. But while Perseverance can run experiments and make major discoveries on its own, it is limited by the tools it can carry. To have the best chance of solving the most longstanding Martian mysteries, we have to leverage the full force of humanity’s largest, most powerful tools — and that means bringing samples back to labs on Earth. 

Experts have called for Mars Sample Return as a top scientific priority for over twenty years. The United States and European partners have invested billions in the program already, and generations of scientists have dedicated themselves to making it a reality. Abandoning samples we have already collected on the surface of Mars would be a historic mistake.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

The mission: Discover what planets are like throughout the galaxy, search for black holes, and help reveal the nature of dark energy. 

Status: Construction almost complete

Launch date: October 2026 – May 2027

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is NASA’s next flagship orbital observatory — a mission on the same scale as the Hubble Space Telescope, with a similarly huge impact. Roman is projected to discover as many as 200,000 possible planets beyond the Solar System, survey over 1 billion galaxies, and hunt for tiny black holes that could help explain dark matter.

Roman has the power to reshape what we know about planets throughout the galaxy. The mission promises to take direct photographs of thousands of planets close to the Solar System, as well as find potentially Earth-like worlds around other stars. The telescope would likely discover hundreds of new moons around Jupiter and Saturn.

At the same time, Roman’s black hole and galaxy surveys could help uncover the true nature of dark matter and dark energy. These two mysteries might hint at undiscovered laws of physics, new kinds of particles, and different predictions for the ultimate fate of the Universe. 

Roman would also provide a massive upgrade from Hubble’s already stunning views of the Universe. Its images would be just as sharp as Hubble’s, but capture 100 times more of the sky in a single shot. 

This spacecraft is nearly ready to launch. Almost 90% of Roman's projected costs have already been spent, and the mission is on time and on budget. Cancelling the telescope now would save almost no money. Instead, it would throw away an investment that’s about to pay off. 

DAVINCI

The mission: Descend to the surface of Venus and probe its atmosphere along the way, testing whether the planet ever had oceans or could have hosted life.

Status: In development

Launch date: ~2030

Full name: Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging

DAVINCI was set to be the first probe to enter the clouds of Venus in nearly 50 years. Without it, we may never know whether Venus once had an ocean or could have hosted life. 

This mission is designed to descend toward the surface of Venus and take measurements of the planet’s atmosphere along the way. DAVINCI would search for clues about Venus’ past, decipher its potential to host water, and test whether microbial life could possibly survive within the atmosphere today.

Answering these questions would change how we think about planets throughout the galaxy. Since Venus may represent what many other small, rocky planets end up like, DAVINCI’s findings might give us a hint about how common Earth-like life might be throughout the Universe. 

Scientists originally proposed DAVINCI to NASA through the agency’s highly competitive Discovery Program, where its scientific merit stood out among many other submissions. Now, NASA is in the early stages of developing the mission. Cancelling it would mean turning away from exploring even one of our closest neighbors in the Solar System.

VERITAS

The mission: Map the surface of Venus and study its interior, unveiling how the planet has changed over time.

Status: In development

Launch date: ~2031 

Full name: Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy

VERITAS aims to discover how Venus ended up boiling under clouds of acid instead of teeming with life like Earth. The mission is a crucial counterpart to DAVINCI. While both spacecraft will help get to the bottom of whether Venus was once a mild, water-rich world, only VERITAS is dedicated to uncovering how the planet transformed over time.

From its orbit above Venus, VERITAS would peer through clouds to study the planet’s surface and interior. The spacecraft would take the first high-definition 3D map of Venus ever, then look for signs of activity like glowing pools of lava and erupting volcanoes. 

This will help scientists decide whether a catastrophic event — like a worldwide volcanic eruption — might have completely reshaped Venus in the past, or whether the planet instead changed more gradually over time. By uncovering how a world that was born so similar to Earth ended up so different, VERITAS would also help us refine what kinds of places we target in the search for life.

Like DAVINCI, NASA selected VERITAS through a highly competitive process. The agency is now in the early stages of developing the mission. If VERITAS is cancelled, we would lose a powerful window onto our neighboring planet and the cataclysms of its past.

TESS

The mission: Discover thousands of planets around the nearest stars. 

Status: Active

Launch date: April 18, 2018

Full name: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite

TESS is one of the most successful planet-hunting spacecraft of all time. It has discovered three new potential planets, on average, every day for the past seven years.

As it orbits Earth, TESS watches thousands of stars to look for momentary dimmings, or transits, caused by the passing shadows of nearby worlds. The mission has found more candidate planets than any other spacecraft to date. It is especially designed to find worlds around the stars closest to the Sun — planets that are perfect for other observatories, like the James Webb Space Telescope, to check on in more detail and search for signs of life.

TESS has discovered Earth-sized planets that could host water on their surface. These worlds, and many of the others TESS finds, are later studied by the Breakthrough Listen project in hopes of finding signals from intelligent life. 

Compared to the money spent building it, TESS costs only a tiny amount to keep online. Every day gives the spacecraft a little more time to discover new worlds. Any given one could change how we think about the Universe forever.

The list goes on…

The five space missions described above are just the tip of the iceberg. Dozens of others are at risk.

NASA’s Astrophysics division may be hit the hardest of all, with reports of a budget cut of nearly 70%. This would force the end of some of the most powerful space telescopes ever, dedicated to studying the most explosive events and extreme environments in the entire Universe. These missions are watching supernovae go off, discovering black holes, and searching for dark matter. Just one of these observatories — Chandra, a sibling of the Hubble Space Telescope — has led to over 10,000 scientific papers. It shows no signs of slowing down soon.

Then there are the heliophysics missions, which study the Sun and the space surrounding Earth. Some of the spacecraft at risk would help reveal how solar storms affect Earth, giving us a chance to lessen the damage these outbursts could do to our electronics. Others would teach us about the Sun’s dangerous radiation and how we can better protect astronauts and satellites (like GPS) in the future.

NASA missions dedicated to Earth science also face severe cutbacks. These spacecraft are designed to track the major forces shaping our planet, from hurricanes and wildfires to rainfall and urbanization. People all over the world use this information to help keep crops alive and prepare for natural disasters. NASA’s Landsat program, which has given us an uninterrupted record of our entire planet since 1972, could also be shut down. 

The cancellation of all these missions may be hard to imagine. But exploration is a choice society makes — and it is one we can abandon.