Trump budget gives last-minute reprieve to science funding

On 12 February, US President Donald Trump released his budget proposal for the 2019 fiscal year, which begins on 1 October 2018. Nature’s US news team will update this story throughout the day with information on what Trump’s budget would mean for US government science agencies.

National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) would receive $7.47 billion in 2019, keeping its funding flat compared to the 2017 level. But that figure includes $2.2 billion the White House added to its NSF proposal at the last minute, after Congress agreed on 8 February to lift mandatory spending caps for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. Trump’s original 2019 plan for NSF would have slashed the agency's budget by nearly 30%, to $5.3 billion.

The White House says that extra $2.2 billion would support basic scientific research, education programmes, upgrades to research facilities in Antarctica and elsewhere, and two new, unspecified cross-disciplinary research activities. But it has not provided a detailed explanation of how that money would be spread across various programmes.

Trump’s modified proposal for 2019 would boost spending across the NSF’s seven research directorates by 2%, to $6.151 billion. The original plan proposed cutting funding for that account by about 30%, to $4.231 billion, compared to the 2017 level of $6.006 billion. The Office of Polar programs would have seen the smallest reduction — about 27%, to $342 million. The agency’s Office of Integrative Activities, which supports cross-disciplinary research, would have seen the largest cut. Its budget would have been slashed by nearly 38%, to $262 million.

The revised budget also proposes a 56% cut to the NSF account that supports construction of research platforms and the acquisition of scientific instrumentation, including the agency’s suite of telescopes. That would reduce its funding from $215 million in 2017 to $95 million in 2019.

NASA

Trump would give NASA $19.9 billion in 2019, a 1.3% increase from the 2017 level. The agency’s science directorate would receive $5.865 billion, a 1.7% increase.

The White House wants to terminate funding for the International Space Station after 2024, when the current US commitment to the 15-nation project expires. That plan is unlikely to fly with many members of Congress; Bill Nelson, a Democratic senator from Florida, has said such a move would decimate his state’s commercial space industry and hinder experiments in low-Earth orbit. The Trump administration wants to explore turning space-station operations over to private industry starting in 2025, but it’s unclear how that transition might happen.

The proposed budget would also cancel the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which is designed to hunt for exoplanets and dark matter. It has been planned as NASA’s next big astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope, which is due to launch next year. “Developing another large space telescope immediately after completing the $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope is not a priority for the Administration,” budget documents say.

A recent independent review found that costs for the WFIRST project could not be kept beneath the $3.2-billion cap set by NASA, and the agency has been working to revise the design to reduce the mission’s price. US astronomers ranked WFIRST the top large mission in a 2010 survey of science priorities for the next decade. ”It’s a bit of a shock,” says David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey who is co-chair of the WFIRST science team. “If a few people in the White House can override these decisions, why do a decadal survey at all?” Spergel says he plans to mobilize astronomers to petition lawmakers to restore funds for WFIRST. NASA will continue to work on the mission as the appropriations process plays out.

Also up for cancellation are five Earth-science missions or instruments that the Trump administration tried but failed to nix last year, after Congress disagreed. They include the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) Earth-observing mission, which is planned for a 2022 launch. The White House would also turn off the Earth-observing instruments on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft, which capture full-disk image

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