America makes a U-turn: $10 billion to Nasa for Sls and the Lunar Gateway
- July 17, 2025
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Uncategorized

The Trump administration’s Big Beautiful Bill, amended at the initiative of Senator Ted Cruz, revives programs threatened with cancellation. Mars Sample Return is back on the table (but not ExoMars).
BY EMILIO COZZI
With one hand it takes away, with the other it gives back, although not everything.
What has become known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (or Bbb for short), the budget and domestic policy bill of the Trump administration, signed by the President of the United States on July 4, allocates a full ten billion dollars to Nasa, in addition to the funds included in the proposed budget, for programs that the same government had previously announced it wanted to cancel: the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule for the Artemis program, the Gateway (the space station in lunar orbit), and the Mars Sample Return mission, among others.
A step backward? An election move, perhaps (next year the United States will vote in the Midterm elections, and the President, whose approval ratings have plummeted, risks losing control of Congress)? It is difficult to decipher Donald Trump’s strategy, especially in the long term.
What the facts show is that while the cuts would have effectively canceled some of the most important missions and infrastructure planned for the coming years, at least on paper, since the NASA budget process will still take months, those same programs are now once again being funded through the new measure. Leading the “reconsideration,” as is well known, is Republican Senator from Texas Ted Cruz, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who proposed the ten billion dollar amendment “to ensure that the United States, and not China, is the first to get to Mars and return to the Moon.”
Back to the Moon, as before
The intentions outlined in the presidential proposal for Nasa’s budget had caused considerable concern in Europe, particularly regarding the lunar exploration programs that have been developed for years in cooperation with overseas allies. This refers mainly to the Lunar Gateway, the space station in lunar orbit, and the systems needed to reach it, namely the Space Launch System, the massive rocket developed to support the Artemis program, and the Orion capsule, built with the European contribution of the service module.
Nasa’s proposed budget, published a couple of months ago, stated:
“It supports the transition of the Artemis campaign to a more sustainable and affordable approach to lunar exploration, by canceling the Gateway space station and the Space Launch System (SLS) upgrades, retiring the legacy Sls and Orion programs after Artemis III, and immediately beginning work on next-generation commercial systems that will support Nasa’s subsequent Artemis lunar missions after Artemis III.”
It is worth remembering that Artemis III is the mission intended to return a crew to walk on the Moon. After Artemis I, which orbited the Moon without anyone on board, next year Artemis II is expected to carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby without landing. After the third mission, Nasa would have relied on more “sustainable” systems. This refers to private transportation services, provided for example by SpaceX and Blue Origin. However, the recent Starship test campaigns have been far from reassuring. As of today, many fear that Artemis III might end up without a ready lander by the time it is needed.
The U-turn by the United States is nearly complete and clearly stated in figures: 4.1 billion dollars “to fund the Space Launch System for Artemis IV and V missions.” The nickname critics have given it, “Senate Launch System,” due to the jobs it supports and the political backing it ensures for senators, suggests the reasons behind this sudden recovery, despite the fact that the launch architecture is undeniably expensive and outdated.
There are also 20 million dollars allocated for a fourth Orion capsule, “to be used with the Space Launch System in the Artemis IV mission and to be reused in future missions.” Similarly, funding for the continued development of the Gateway is back on the table: 2.6 billion dollars over the next three years.
Here too, Europe has significant interests, as much of the structure is being built there, particularly at the Thales Alenia Space facilities in Turin.
Mars Sample Return is back
There is renewed discussion about Mars Sample Return, another program designed in cooperation with Europe, which the proposed Nasa spending bill seeks to cancel. The mission involves collecting samples of Martian soil gathered by the American rover Perseverance, left on the ground to be retrieved and sent back to Earth by rocket, where they will be analyzed.
Ambitious, the endeavor requires at least three new missions: a rover to collect the sample capsules, a lander with a rocket to launch the samples into Martian orbit, and a satellite to act as a courier, catching them and transporting them to our planet. Expensive, with extremely long and uncertain timelines, the program had faced such significant cuts that Nasa was forced to reconsider the entire effort and look for low-cost alternatives. This eventually led to a proposal for its complete cancellation.
The Bbb includes “700 million dollars for the commercial procurement of a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. This orbiter serves a dual purpose, both for the Mars Sample Return mission to bring samples from Mars back to Earth and for future crewed missions to Mars.” It is not a full reversal, but the fact that it is being mentioned again suggests the door remains open.
The future of the Iss rewritten once again
Funding is also planned for the International Space Station: 1.25 billion dollars over five years. The original budget had cut 500 million just for 2026, so it appears this is not a return to previous funding levels, but rather “funds necessary for space operations to, from, and on the Iss, to ensure an orderly transition to commercial platforms after 2030 and to guarantee that there is no gap in American leadership in low Earth orbit.”
In other words, the Trump administration’s disengagement strategy seems to hit a pause, especially when it comes to abandoning such a strategic (and symbolic) activity as human presence in low Earth and lunar orbit, where China continues steadily and could potentially overtake.
Regarding the Iss, 325 million dollars are also allocated to the US Deorbit Vehicle (or Usdv), the spacecraft that will likely be used in 2030 to push the station out of orbit and into the Pacific Ocean. Last year, Nasa awarded SpaceX a contract worth 843 million dollars to develop the vehicle, although that deal did not include the launch. It is unclear whether the new funding is intended for the launch itself or to cover additional costs.
Added to all of this is one billion dollars for the improvement of space centers and launch infrastructure, and 85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington to Houston.
Unfortunately, there is no reconsideration regarding another program that is dear to Europe and that, without Nasa’s involvement, will not be able to move forward, certainly not within the planned timeframe. This is ExoMars 2028, the mission involving the Rosalind Franklin rover, which is meant to search for signs of past or present life beneath the surface of Mars. It currently “rests” patiently in the clean rooms of Thales Alenia Space, with the hope that someone will integrate it with a propulsion system to slow the landing module during descent, and with radioisotope heaters to keep the rover warm during the cold Martian night.
These are technologies that Nasa was supposed to provide (along with the launch vehicle), and which Europe does not yet fully master. The only two landing attempts, Beagle 2 and the Schiaparelli lander, ended in failure.
The sentence included in Nasa’s proposed budget reads like an epitaph: “The budget does not support Nasa contributions to the European Space Agency’s Rosalind Franklin ExoMars Rover mission.” The hope is that Donald Trump’s United States might reconsider. Once again.