How NASA’s proposed budget cuts are felt across the Atlanticby Jeff Foust
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| “We value deeply the collaboration between Europe and NASA,” Mundell said. “But we do have the technical capabilities in Europe today, should it be necessary, to reproduce missing elements.” |
The impact, though, goes beyond NASA itself and even the broader space industry in the United States. Across the Atlantic, European officials are pondering what the NASA budget means for the many programs it is involved with, and by extension whether it can continue to rely on the US as a partner in spaceflight.
Representatives of the European Space Agency’s member states discussed in detail the NASA budget proposal at a meeting of the ESA Council last week, examining how the agency’s work in human spaceflight, space science, and Earth science would be affected by cuts to NASA programs where ESA is a partner as well as ESA-led mission where NASA is a partner.
“We are impacted on quite of number of domains that, at least for the moment, are proposed for cancellations or reductions,” Josef Aschbacher, ESA director general, said at a press briefing after the ESA Council meeting last Thursday.
The biggest impacts are in human spaceflight. ESA provides the service module for the Orion spacecraft that the budget proposal would terminate after Artemis 3. It is also building modules for the lunar Gateway that would be cancelled in the budget.
Science missions would be hit. Carole Mundell, ESA’s director of science, said at the briefing that ESA and NASA work together on 19 space science missions. Most will be unaffected by the budget with what she called “good planning,” but three face problems: the Envision mission to Venus, the LISA gravitational wave observatory, and the New Athena X-ray telescope.
Those ESA-led missions would require “recovery actions” by ESA, she said, to mitigate the impacts of NASA’s proposal to end cooperation on them. She didn’t elaborate on the specific recovery actions, but said there would be ways for ESA to go it alone on all three missions, still in early phases of development.
“The point that I would like to underline is that we value deeply the collaboration between Europe and NASA,” she said. “But we do have the technical capabilities in Europe today, should it be necessary, to reproduce missing elements.”
(That list of 19 space science missions does not include Mars Sample Return, which NASA’s budget also proposes to cancel, as ESA includes that in its human and robotic exploration directorate. That is also home to the Rosalind Franklin rover mission to Mars, whose NASA support is jeopardized by the budget.)
| “I think there is a window of opportunity for Europe to begin a lunar initiative,” Fuchs said. “This ministerial conference is a good opportunity to start that.” |
In Earth observation, the budget affects the “excellent collaboration” between ESA and NASA, said Simoneta Cheli, director of Earth observation at ESA. The NASA budget affects some joint missions, including Sentinel-6C, the third in a series of joint missions studying rising sea levels.
She said ESA was looking at potential options if NASA drops out of those missions, but noted ESA was still trying to understand the implications of the budget cuts on other collaboration with NASA.
The challenge for ESA is two-fold. One is finding ways to mitigate the impacts on the agency, and European industry, from the proposed NASA budget cuts. The other is the uncertainty about what the final NASA budget for 2026 will look like and when it will be completed.
In the former category, Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s director of human and robotic exploration, said the agency and industry were looking at what they could do with the Orion service module, also known as ESM. ESA has delivered the service modules for the first three Artemis missions and expects to deliver later this year the ESM for Artemis 4—if, of course, there is still an Artemis 4.
“We are studying with the industry consortium delivering the European service modules some alternative missions for ESM,” he said. “We will continue to deliver the ESM as long as they are needed.”
He didn’t elaborate on what those alternative uses for ESM could be. Asked about that at a briefing at the Paris Air Show on Monday, Alain Fauré, head of space systems at Airbus Defence and Space, the prime contractor for the ESM, said it was too early to discuss specific alternative uses for the service module.
“ESM is able to provide everything: energy, water, fresh air,” he said. “We need to discuss, for sure, with the various institutions to see what would be the repurposing.”
Those assessments are complicated by the uncertainty of what exactly NASA’s 2026 budget will look like and when it will be finalized. While neither House nor Senate appropriators have started formal work on spending bills that would include NASA, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he would seek to add $10 billion to a budget reconciliation bill being considered by the Senate for NASA human spaceflight. That proposal would funding SLS and Orion through Artemis 5 as well as complete the Gateway. It would not though, address cuts to science missions.
For ESA, the proposed cuts come as it prepares for its next ministerial conference in late November, where ESA member states will agree on a spending plan for the next three years. Aschbacher said the agency’s current plans seek about 23 billion euros ($26.5 billion) for three years, a significant increase from the 17 billion euros member states approved at the 2022 ministerial.
Aschbacher suggested there may be ways to compensate for the cuts at the ministerial, hoping that the final NASA budget would be completed by then. That is unlikely, though, based on the recent history of NASA budgets that were not finalized until months after the start of the fiscal year on October 1.
“We need to assess on one side how much does it cost to wait,” he said, “and how long can we wait, because there are decision points coming up on our side.”
The timing of NASA and ESA budgets “are not perfectly aligned,” he said during a briefing Monday at the Paris Air Show. “We can take into account last-minute changes that may occur, triggered from the NASA budget decisions, but, of course, we are consolidating already our ministerial proposal and therefore we are making some assumptions of increasing autonomy already now.”
Even if the worst of the proposed budget cuts at NASA are rejected by Congress, preserving programs with ESA cooperation, there is a growing concern in Europe that the United States may no longer be a reliable partner in space. It comes at the same time Europeans are worried that NASA may be pulling back in defense as well in Europe even as Russia grows more aggressive.
“It seems that Artemis is coming to an end before there is a return of humans on the Moon,” said Marco Fuchs, CEO of German aerospace company OHB, at a press conference during the Paris Air Show on Monday.
He suggested that Europe do more to develop its own capabilities for lunar exploration. “I think there is a window of opportunity for Europe to begin a lunar initiative,” he said. “This ministerial conference is a good opportunity to start that.”
Walther Peltzer, director general of the German Space Agency at DLR, noted at the same briefing that one ESA lunar project, the Argonaut cargo lunar lander, started as a joint French-German initiative, and only later became a potential ESA contribution to Artemis. “So we discuss within ESA now that we actually go back to the initial idea to have a European Moon mission.”
| “We are known as a reliable, trusted partner that has always delivered,” Aschbacher said, “and we will continue to deliver on those promises.” |
Aschbacher, at the ESA Council briefing and later at the Paris Air Show, emphasized that ESA continued to work well with NASA, thanking it for providing updates on the budget process. He noted at the air show that he had a meeting with NASA leadership earlier in the day. (Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, is attending the show but keeping a low public profile.)
“We are in close and constant dialogue,” he said. “It is very clear that some of the proposals made have a significant impact, but I can say we really have a good exchange.”
At the ESA Council meeting, though, he emphasized partnerships with other nations, such as an agreement signed with India in May to cooperate on human spaceflight that could eventually lead to European astronauts going to India’s proposed space station in the 2030s. He also noted strong collaboration with Canada, a “cooperating state” of ESA that, while not a full member, can contribute to and participate in ESA programs.
“We are known as a reliable, trusted partner that has always delivered,” he said, “and we will continue to deliver on those promises.”
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