Congress moves to reject bulk of White House’s proposed NASA cuts.

"We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions, and instead we provide $7.3 billion, said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), ranking member of the Senate's Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee, during a budget markup hearing last week. "Our rivals are eager to race ahead — not just in space exploration, but in science and innovation across the board," the senator said.

The full text of the Senate bill hasn't been released, but the budget blueprint would postpone the Trump administration's plan to cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, according to Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the Senate subcommittee's chairman.

"For NASA, the bill reflects an ambitious approach to space exploration, prioritizing the agency's flagship program Artemis and rejecting premature terminations of systems like SLS and Orion before commercial replacements are ready," Moran said. "We make critical investments to accelerate our plans to land Americans on the lunar surface before the Chinese, but also in the technologies and capacity to land astronauts on Mars."

Moran said the Senate bill also protects "key science missions" to provide furthering scientists' "understanding of the Earth" and ensuring Americans are "better stewards of our natural resources." The bill also supports programs to "safeguard the Earth from natural disasters," Moran said.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/07/congress-moves-to-reject-bulk-of-white-houses-proposed-nasa-cuts/