Lunar Gateway axed in proposed NASA budget

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its budget proposal for FY2026 today that includes a cut of nearly 25% for NASA and would ax the Lunar Gateway.

The budget proposal stated it would “terminate the Gateway, a small lunar space station in development with international partners, which would have been used to support future SLS and Orion missions.” Also being phased out is the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

As part of the Artemis program Canada is contributing the Canadarm3 and health technology to the Gateway. Other foreign contributions to the Gateway would come from Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Europe.

Gateway Space Station elements. Image credit: NASA.

If the proposed budget is passed as is it would create additional friction between the U.S. and its partners in another area. Congress will make changes to the proposed U.S. budget, however it’s unclear if Gateway can be saved from the chopping block.

NASA’s budget would decrease from about USD$25 billion to USD$18.8 billion.

More to come.

Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor & publisher. He is the founder of SpaceQ Media and Director of Digital Platforms for SpaceNews. Boucher has 25+ years working in various roles in the space industry and a total of 30 years as a technology entrepreneur including creating Canada’s first internet directory and search engine.

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