House Appropriators advance key NASA funding bill

Key takeaways

• The House budget bill that includes NASA funding just cleared a key hurdle, advancing out of the Appropriations Committee. This is the first funding bill for FY 2027 to be released and reach this stage, establishing congressional intent and rejecting the worst of the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed cuts to NASA.
• The bill keeps NASA funding flat with the currently enacted budget, but reprioritizes funding levels across the agency, including a 17% cut to Science to offset increases elsewhere.
• A number of science missions proposed for cancellation by the OMB see their funding protected by this bill, including OSIRIS-APEX, New Horizons, and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. New programs initiated by Administrator Isaacman that were absent from the OMB proposal, like Space Reactor-1 Freedom, also see their first dedicated mention in the proposal.
• The full House still needs to vote on this, and the Senate is expected to release its own proposal within weeks. Congress will then work to develop full-year funding, in anticipation of the start of FY 2027 on Oct. 1, but will likely require a short-term funding patch, which comes with its own hurdles.

On May 13, 2026, the House Appropriations Committee advanced its Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) Appropriations bill, including funding for NASA, NSF, and other science agencies, marking a major milestone in the FY 2027 budget process. The vote fell on party lines, with every Republican voting for it and every Democrat against. Regardless of the partisan split on the bill as a whole, the package rejects the most extreme elements of the White House's FY 2027 proposal for NASA and reaffirms Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution that Congress, not the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), sets federal agency funding priorities.

The NASA budget proposed by the bill would see the agency’s topline stay flat with currently enacted funding levels: $24.4 billion, not including supplemental funding provided by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Under this flat budget, NASA's Exploration programs see a $1.14 billion bump, while the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) is cut by 17%, from $7.25 billion to $6.0 billion. The report language — representing a detailed accounting of congressional intent for how NASA should use the appropriated funds — protects many of the missions threatened with cancellation or severe budget cuts by the OMB's deeply unpopular proposal.

If you're experiencing déjà vu, that's because this is a nearly identical situation to last year's budget fight. And just like last year, this action by the House Appropriations Committee tees up the ultimate rejection of the OMB request after the Senate weighs in and the two chambers work towards a compromise bill that fully funds NASA and its beleaguered science programs. But it’s not time to pop the cork for our Save NASA Science campaign. Though this political context is important, let’s take a closer look at what’s actually in (and not in) the House CJS bill.

What the bill does

At the topline, the bill holds NASA flat with currently enacted funding, rejecting the White House's proposal to drive the agency to its lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1961. That alone is a substantive policy statement: the House Appropriations Committee has now twice declined to ratify the OMB’s vision of a dramatically smaller NASA. And instead, they’ve endorsed a number of proposals put forward by Administrator Isaacman and President Trump, while also maintaining support for existing programs and projects that are the hallmark of U.S. leadership in space science and exploration.

* includes supplemental funding provided in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

On the Exploration side of the bill, the language is even more emphatic. Exploration receives $8.93 billion, $1.14 billion above the FY 2026 enacted level, including a total $2.6 billion for the Space Launch System (SLS) and $1.4 billion for the Orion Program. After Artemis II flew successfully earlier this year, Congress is reining in calls to shift crewed deep space exploration entirely to commercial providers, who have yet to demonstrate success. The report prohibits NASA from reallocating funds away from SLS until a commercial alternative is proven to meet or exceed the capabilities of the SLS and Orion system, and any commercial services NASA pursues for Artemis VI and beyond must clear the same bar, including human-rated certification. For all the talk about off-ramps and greater reliance on commercial components for deep space missions, the bill does not mince words in its support for SLS and Orion. Artemis II worked, and so did the political coalition that has been built up across multiple administrations. The political resilience of SLS and Orion is not to be understated.

The same commitment extends to where Artemis is meant to go in the long-term. The Committee "strongly supports" NASA's plan to establish a permanent American outpost on the Moon as soon as 2030, supported by multiple crew and cargo flights per year. The bill funds the Human Landing System at $2.28 billion, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program at $448.1 million, and Fission Surface Power at $419.9 million to enable operations through the lunar night. The plan leans heavily on supplemental resources Congress provided last year, as well as new discretionary dollars. The Moon Base, unveiled at Administrator Isaacman's Ignition event earlier this spring, now has explicit congressional backing as an Artemis campaign objective. 

Yet it’s not the era of good feelings across the agency; science nevertheless takes a cut. The bill provides $6.0 billion for SMD — $1.25 billion below the FY 2026 enacted level, and a 17% reduction. That is a real and consequential reduction, but it is far short of the roughly 46% cut OMB proposed, which would have required the early termination of dozens of operating and in-development missions. Despite the topline cut, the bill requires that no less than the amounts specified in the accompanying report be obligated at designated funding levels. This is the same enforcement mechanism used in last year's bill and the ultimate guidance that is currently law in FY 2026. It is the principal tool Congress is using to constrain administrative reprogramming, and its presence here signals that the Committee intends to bind NASA's hands on specific priorities.

The report language protects some science missions in development and currently operating, but not all. Dragonfly receives a minimum of $423.9 million with direction to ensure launch readiness by mid-2028; the New Horizons, Juno, Chandra, Hubble, and JWST missions are all directed to continue; OSIRIS-APEX receives $20 million to continue preparations for its flyby of the asteroid Apophis during its 2029 close approach; and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope receives $166.8 million in anticipation of its launch in September 2026. The breadth of mission-specific protections in the report tracks closely with the priorities Members from both parties pressed Administrator Isaacman on during the April hearings.

Another welcome return this year is a callout for the Uranus Orbiter and Probe, which was first funded in the minibus that passed in January. The report directs NASA to continue formulation of the mission consistent with the priorities of the 2023 Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. Though no specific funding amount is set aside for this project, its inclusion as a priority in this bill indicates an overall congressional commitment to flagship science missions and the decadal surveys.

In the Astrophysics Division, the bill fully funds the on-budget, ahead-of-schedule Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in anticipation of a launch later this year, possibly as early as August or September. After Roman, the Astro2020 Decadal Survey identified the Habitable Worlds Observatory as the next major flagship for the astrophysics community. In addition to its decadal backing, HWO was favorably mentioned by members of both the House and Senate during last month's hearings with Administrator Isaacman, who also remarked on the importance of making early investments in this next Great Observatory. The original CJS bill text did not include mention of HWO. However, through the noncontroversial “manager’s amendment,” the proposal was amended to include “no less than” the enacted $150 million to go towards HWO, marking a significant win for the space science community and another rebuke of the OMB proposal.

Alongside its support for individual flagship missions, the bill introduces a new "block buy" provision for Discovery and New Frontiers program missions. New Frontiers 5, the next installment of this storied program, is behind schedule by at least three years, with initial planning having begun in November 2020, a community town hall happening in March 2023, and no further action since mid-2023. The Discovery Program is equally delayed, with the last Discovery selection made back in 2021. The block buy provision applies only to certain elements of a spacecraft, not whole-mission procurements, and the Committee directs NASA to source these capabilities from no fewer than two U.S. commercial providers. This idea, proposed most recently in Administrator Isaacman’s Project Athena, may create the conditions where NASA is committed to a regular cadence of New Frontiers and Discovery-class missions. However, the bill does not provide the necessary funding to develop the instrumentation, support the workforce, and initiate the competitions that result in these high-performing, cost-conscious missions. It is also currently unclear at what level you can standardize these types of missions, as each spacecraft in these program lines has a level of uniqueness necessary to survive the space and planetary environments they explore, such that bulk purchases may further constrain what destinations and types of mission concepts are possible.

Several of the bill's technology investments amount to Congress giving its blessing to elements of Administrator Isaacman's Ignition initiative that the FY 2027 President’s Budget Request either omitted or contradicted. The bill provides $110 million for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) reactor and engine development, $50 million for Nuclear Electric Propulsion (NEP), and $5 million for fusion propulsion research. It specifically supports the Space Reactor-1 Freedom (SR-1), the first nuclear-powered interplanetary spacecraft, which NASA plans to fly to Mars before the end of 2028. The bill also supports the Mars Skyfall mission, an engineering successor to Ingenuity. To further develop capabilities at and on Mars, the bill directs NASA to coordinate the development of key technologies across the Science and Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorates to enable both robotic and future crewed missions. As Members repeatedly raised during the April hearings, the Ignition plans and the OMB budget request did not square with one another. On this question, the Committee has clearly chosen the more ambitious vision.

The bill also takes a measured step toward addressing NASA's workforce crisis. The report supports the new “NASA Force” 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. 

Finally, the bill keeps the two most popular elements of the Office of STEM Engagement — EPSCoR ($26 million) and Space Grant ($58 million) — 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.

What it doesn’t do

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.

NASA’s current Discovery Program projects — VERITAS, DAVINCI, and the VenSAR contribution to ESA’s EnVision — 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’s 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.

The bill is also silent on Mars 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 preparing 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. 

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. 

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 — including The Planetary Society — to take action to oppose the recent NSB decision.

Where do we go from here?

The Senate is expected to act on its own CJS bill in June. In FY 2026, the Senate provided more generous SMD funding than the House and added more mission-specific protections. That pattern seems likely to repeat. The Senate is again where SMD funding has its best chance to rebound toward the $9 billion supported by a broad coalition of advocates, organizations, and more than 120 Members of Congress. Once the Senate bill comes out, the work of compromise begins. As last year demonstrated, the final enacted numbers tend to land closer to the Senate position when the science community is organized and visible.

There is also a more immediate consequence of the House Appropriations Committee reporting out a bill, and it matters regardless of how much the bill itself shortchanges science. Under OMB’s own rules, if a continuing resolution (CR) is enacted and either chamber’s appropriations committee has passed a funding bill that provides funding for a particular account, OMB is required to apportion funds at the lower of the two levels between the House and the Senate for the duration of the CR. The rule exists to keep the executive branch from pre-empting Congress on funding decisions. The House CJS bill forecloses one of OMB's most aggressive options to enact its unpopular cuts in the likely event that FY 2027 begins under a CR. Simply, we now have the lower end of the likely funding scenarios for FY 2027, rendering the OMB request all but moot.

Another consideration is the fate of the NASA Authorization bills moving through the House and Senate. Authorizations set policy direction and recommended funding levels but do not provide budget authority. Where the authorizers and appropriators converge, especially on protections for science missions, on STEM engagement, and on the sustainability of the Artemis program, the combined signal from two committees of jurisdiction can carry weight in funding negotiations. The two pending bills are not so far apart that compromise is out of reach, and there is momentum behind passing the first multi-year NASA Authorization since 2017. The Senate version is the stronger of the two on recommended funding, proposing a 2.5% annual increase for each NASA account. That increase would not undo the damage of the past two budget cycles, but it would counteract some of the worst impacts of inflation on NASA's purchasing power and serve as a necessary first step toward restoring federal support for the Earth and space sciences.

The FY 2027 budget process is far from over, so the campaign to Save NASA Science must continue in earnest. The House Appropriations Committee has set a floor for NASA funding and rejected the worst of OMB's proposal. The Senate is up next, and history says that is where Science has its best chance to make a recovery. And with the pending authorization bills, we may even be able to push for meaningful growth. What happens between now and the final enacted bill depends on whether the community shows up the way it did last year. The OMB request is effectively moot. The question is no longer whether Congress will reject it, but how far Congress is willing to go to actually fund the agency it has built.