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NASA's Budget Explained: Where the Money Goes

Published September 28, 2026

NASA is running on about $24.44 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2026, plus roughly $3.1 billion more from a separate mandatory law, for total resources near $27.5 billion, the largest NASA budget since 1998 once adjusted for inflation (The Planetary Society ). For fiscal year 2027, the White House asked Congress to cut that to $18.83 billion, a 23 percent reduction that would hit space science hardest, but the House Appropriations Committee voted in May 2026 to reject most of that cut, and as of late September 2026 the final number is still unsettled while the government runs on a stopgap funding law (SpacePolicyOnline.com ; Computing Research Association ). Here is what that money actually funds, what proposed cuts would mean for the telescopes sky-watchers follow, and how Canada's space budget compares.

NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget, division by division

Congress finalized NASA's fiscal year 2026 funding through a "minibus" appropriations bill, H.R. 6938, which the House passed 397 to 28 on January 8, 2026, and the Senate passed 82 to 15 on January 15, 2026 (SpacePolicyOnline.com ). That bill set base discretionary funding at $24.44 billion, about $400 million below fiscal year 2025's $24.875 billion (Wikipedia, "Budget of NASA" ; The Planetary Society ). On top of that base, a separate 2025 reconciliation law, the Working Families Tax Cut Act (P.L. 119-21), set aside $9.995 billion in mandatory funding for NASA exploration programs spread across fiscal years 2025 through 2029, of which roughly $3.1 billion landed in fiscal year 2026 alone, including $2.845 billion more for exploration hardware, $1.025 billion a year for the Space Launch System and Orion capsule through fiscal year 2029, and $250 million more for the International Space Station (NASA, "FY 2027 Budget Estimates" ; SpacePolicyOnline.com ). Combining both funding streams brings NASA's total fiscal year 2026 resources to about $27.53 billion, which The Planetary Society calls the agency's largest inflation-adjusted budget since fiscal year 1998 (The Planetary Society ).

Account FY2026 enacted
Exploration (Artemis, SLS, Orion, Human Landing System) $7.78 billion base, about $10.63 billion combined with reconciliation funds
Science Mission Directorate $7.25 billion
Space Operations (International Space Station, commercial crew) $4.18 billion base, about $4.43 billion combined with reconciliation funds
Space Technology $920.5 million
Aeronautics $935.0 million
STEM Engagement $143.0 million

Figures from The Planetary Society's FY2027 analysis and SpacePolicyOnline.com's FY2026 appropriations report .

Within the Science Mission Directorate, the $7.25 billion enacted for fiscal year 2026 breaks down into Planetary Science at $2.54 billion, Astrophysics at about $1.6 billion, Earth Science at $2.15 billion, Heliophysics at $874.8 million, and Biological and Physical Sciences at $86.0 million, in every case well above the White House's original request for that division (The Planetary Society ). Congress had originally been asked to fund the whole Science Mission Directorate at only $3.91 billion for fiscal year 2026, a roughly 47 percent cut from what it ultimately enacted, and lawmakers rejected that request outright (The Planetary Society ).

The fiscal year 2027 request: a much deeper proposed cut

NASA's own budget office released its detailed fiscal year 2027 request in April 2026, proposing $18.83 billion total, which the agency's request document describes as its smallest budget, adjusted for inflation, in 66 years (NASA, "FY 2027 Budget Estimates" ; The Planetary Society ). An earlier "skinny budget" outline released April 3, 2026 had already signaled the direction, describing what its own summary called the smallest NASA budget since 1961 when adjusted for inflation (The Planetary Society ).

Account FY2026 enacted FY2027 request Change
Total NASA $24.44 billion $18.83 billion -23%
Exploration $7.78 billion $8.51 billion +9%
Science Mission Directorate $7.25 billion $3.89 billion -46%
Space Operations $4.18 billion $3.05 billion -27%
Space Technology $920.5 million $624.3 million -32%
Aeronautics $935.0 million $609.5 million -35%
STEM Engagement $143.0 million $0 (proposed termination) -100%

Figures from The Planetary Society's FY2027 analysis and NASA's own FY2027 budget estimates .

The request would raise Exploration funding for Artemis, the crewed Moon and Mars program, while cutting nearly every other account, with Science taking the deepest hit at 46 percent. The Planetary Society's analysis counts roughly 53 active or planned missions the request would terminate or decline to fund further, though it notes the request text names only a handful outright, including the Venus missions DAVINCI, VERITAS and the US contribution to Europe's EnVision, the Earth-observing OCO-2, OCO-3 and Aura satellites, and the aging Mars Odyssey orbiter (The Planetary Society ).

What it would mean for the telescopes sky-watchers follow

Inside Science, the request would cut the Astrophysics Division by 65 percent, from about $1.595 billion to $552 million, which is the division that funds the space telescopes most amateur astronomers and casual sky-watchers actually recognize (American Astronomical Society ):

For readers who track eclipses, aurorae or eclipse-chasing trips through our eclipses hub, the relevant detail is that NASA's Heliophysics account, the division behind solar and eclipse science, sits inside this same Science Mission Directorate and would also be affected by any directorate-wide cut, even though the request singles out astrophysics and planetary missions for the deepest reductions (The Planetary Society ). Hubble and Webb images also turn up constantly in pop culture; our space movies roundup looks at how accurately Hollywood has used real NASA science like this over the decades.

Where the fight stands right now

The House Appropriations Committee approved its own fiscal year 2027 Commerce-Justice-Science bill on May 13, 2026, rejecting the administration's deepest proposed cuts. That committee bill would hold total NASA funding flat at $24.438 billion, the same as fiscal year 2026, and would fund Science at $6 billion, well above the $3.89 billion requested even though it is still $1.3 billion below fiscal year 2026's enacted $7.25 billion, with Astrophysics specifically set at $1.485 billion (SpacePolicyOnline.com ). Democrats on the committee still opposed the bill partly over the science reductions it does contain, even as it moved well past what the White House had asked for (SpacePolicyOnline.com ).

None of that is final. Congress passed a continuing resolution, signed into law on September 3, 2026, that extends federal funding, including NASA's, through December 11, 2026, while lawmakers keep working on full-year fiscal year 2027 bills (Computing Research Association ). Until a final bill passes or another stopgap extends it again, NASA is operating at its fiscal year 2026 funding levels. Our Nightly News section tracks dated developments as they happen, since any budget figure here reflects the state of play only as of this article's last update.

How today's budget compares to NASA's history

NASA's share of total federal spending peaked during the Apollo program, reaching about 4.41 percent in 1966, with 1964 through 1966 all hovering near 4 percent of the entire federal budget (Wikipedia, "Budget of NASA" ). That share fell sharply once Apollo ended, ticked back up briefly to 1.01 percent in 1992, then settled to around 0.5 percent by 2013 and has stayed below that mark since (Wikipedia, "Budget of NASA" ).

Year NASA's share of the federal budget
1966 (Apollo-era peak) 4.41%
1992 1.01%
2013 about 0.5%
2025 0.35%
2026 0.33%

Figures compiled from Wikipedia's "Budget of NASA," citing Planetary Society and NASA historical data .

That history explains a well-documented perception gap: a 2018 Business Insider survey found respondents guessed NASA received about 6.4 percent of federal spending on average, more than twelve times its actual share that year of roughly 0.5 percent (Wikipedia, "Budget of NASA" ). Even NASA's largest recent budget in inflation-adjusted decades, the current $27.53 billion in combined fiscal year 2026 resources, is still a small fraction of what the agency commanded during the Moon race (The Planetary Society ; Wikipedia, "Budget of NASA" ).

Different views on what NASA's money should fund

The fiscal year 2027 debate is really a disagreement about priorities, and the sources covering it lay out that disagreement rather than settling it. The Planetary Society and the American Astronomical Society, both advocacy and professional groups for the space science community, argue that the proposed science cuts would cancel productive missions early, waste money already spent building them, and fall hardest on the astrophysics and planetary science work that produces much of NASA's public-facing discoveries (The Planetary Society ; American Astronomical Society ). The administration's own request frames the tradeoff differently, directing new money toward Exploration and the crewed Artemis Moon and Mars program while reducing funding for science, technology and aeronautics accounts, consistent with a policy choice to prioritize human spaceflight within a smaller overall NASA budget (NASA, "FY 2027 Budget Estimates" ). The House Appropriations Committee's bipartisan committee vote to reject most of the proposed science cuts, while still trimming Science below its fiscal year 2026 level, suggests Congress so far favors a middle position between the two (SpacePolicyOnline.com ). Readers weighing the debate can follow the primary appropriations documents themselves through our research hub, which links directly to the government sources behind figures like these rather than just summaries of them.

A Canada note: the Canadian Space Agency's budget

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is Canada's counterpart to NASA, and its budget runs on a very different scale and calendar. The CSA's own 2025-26 Departmental Plan, published in 2025, projected planned spending of $834,080,831 CAD for that fiscal year, split between $778,010,952 for its "Canada in Space" core responsibility and $56,069,879 for internal services, a level the agency itself called a record (SpaceQ ). The agency's newer 2026-27 Departmental Plan revises that 2025-26 estimate down to $666,840,285 and sets planned spending for 2026-27 itself at $475,881,514, a roughly 29 percent year-over-year decrease that the CSA attributes mainly to government-wide spending reductions under the Comprehensive Expenditure Review and to funding profile changes for the Canadarm3, WildFireSat and RADARSAT+ programs (Canadian Space Agency, 2026-27 Departmental Plan ). Downward revisions between one departmental plan and the next are a routine feature of how Canadian federal spending is forecast rather than a sign of a NASA-style political standoff; Canada's space budget has no equivalent of the science-versus-exploration fight described above, since CSA funding is set through the ordinary federal estimates process rather than a separate appropriations battle over which missions to keep.

Quick answers

How much money does NASA get each year? Congress gave NASA about $24.44 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal year 2026, plus roughly $3.1 billion more from a 2025 reconciliation law, for total resources near $27.53 billion, the largest NASA budget since 1998 after adjusting for inflation .

What percentage of the federal budget does NASA get? About 0.33 percent in fiscal year 2026 , far below the roughly 4.4 percent NASA received at its Apollo-era peak in 1966.

Is NASA's budget being cut in 2027? The White House requested $18.83 billion for fiscal year 2027 , a 23 percent cut, but the House Appropriations Committee voted in May 2026 to hold total funding flat at $24.44 billion instead. The final number was still unsettled as of this writing; check Nightly News for the latest.

Would the proposed NASA budget cut affect the Hubble or Webb telescopes? The fiscal year 2027 request would cut Hubble to about $72.7 million and Webb's science budget to $20 million , while proposing to end the Chandra X-ray Observatory entirely. The House's own draft bill rejected cuts that steep.

How does the Canadian Space Agency's budget compare? The CSA planned to spend about $475.9 million CAD in fiscal year 2026-27 , down from a revised $666.8 million the year before, a reduction tied to government-wide spending reviews rather than the fight playing out over NASA's science budget.

Where can I check NASA's actual budget documents myself? Our research hub links to the primary government sources behind figures like these, and NASA's own FY2027 budget estimates document is the underlying source for the agency's own request numbers.

Sources

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