“One Big Beautiful Bill” sets stage for NASA’s return to the Moon

When President Donald Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” into law on July 4, an amendment to the legislation introduced by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) provided NASA with additional funding beyond the standard fiscal year 2025 budget. This extra money — around $9.9 billion — is intended to support key programs like Artemis, the Space Launch System (SLS), and Orion over the coming years, ensuring funding through 2032. 

FY 2026 budget proposal took a different path

In March 2025, the Trump administration released its FY 2026 budget proposal, which took a markedly different approach to Artemis funding. The plan called for retiring the SLS and Orion spacecraft after Artemis 3 — the first planned crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 — and canceling the Gateway lunar outpost. This signaled a shift toward increasing reliance on commercial partnerships while scaling back NASA’s traditional heavy-lift and crewed spacecraft programs.

The move to privatize lunar missions has backing from experts like Jared Isaacman, a private astronaut and space entrepreneur. During his Senate Committee nomination hearing on April 9, 2025, Isaacman said, “I believe the SLS and existing Artemis architecture represent the fastest way to get American astronauts back to the Moon. But over the long term, it’s not a sustainable or affordable solution.” He noted that commercial launch providers like SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, and Rocket Lab are driving innovation and reducing costs. Isaacman suggested that NASA should eventually shift its focus away from competing with private industry on launch vehicles and instead concentrate on next-generation spacecraft technologies, such as nuclear propulsion.

Despite the budget’s cost-cutting approach, the reconciliation bill directs nearly $10 billion to keep SLS and Orion funded for Artemis missions 4 and 5. This includes $4.1 billion specifically allocated for the Space Launch System, with a mandated minimum of $1.025 billion per year from FY 2026 through FY 2029 to cover procurement, transportation, and operation costs. The bill also sets aside $20 million to fund the Orion spacecraft for Artemis 4 and subsequent missions. Additionally, it preserves $2.6 billion for the Gateway lunar outpost, requiring at least $750 million to be spent on the project during FY 2026 through FY 2028, ensuring the continuation of this international cooperative endeavor.

By signing the bill on July 4, President Trump effectively endorsed the increased NASA spending, though his stance on this shift from his original budget proposal remains unclear.

Cruz pushes Moon mission amid China’s lunar ambitions

Cruz, who played a key role in securing the additional Artemis funding through a floor amendment, has repeatedly stressed the urgency of NASA’s lunar program. In a post on April 7 on X (formerly Twitter), he wrote, “The moon mission MUST happen in President Trump’s term or else China will beat us there and build the first moonbase.” Reflecting this urgency, at the April confirmation hearing for Isaacman, Cruz warned, “We are not headed for the next space race. It is already here. … I am hard-pressed to think of a more catastrophic mistake we could make in space than saying to communist China, ‘The Moon is yours.’”

Cruz’s insistence aligns with broader concerns about what some are calling a second space race marked by China’s growing ambitions in space, especially its plans to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson summed up the geopolitical stakes in a 2023 POLITICO interview: “It is a fact: we’re in a space race. And it is true that we better watch out that they don’t get to a place on the moon under the guise of scientific research. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, ‘Keep out, we’re here, this is our territory.’”

NASA faces significant technical and scheduling challenges in returning to the moon. Delays to Artemis 2 and 3 — including issues with the Orion heat shield during the uncrewed Artemis 1 test flight — have pushed timelines back. In December 2024, NASA delayed Artemis 2 from its original September 2025 launch date to April 2026, and Artemis 3 from September 2026 to mid-2027. These delays raise questions about when the U.S. can realistically return astronauts to the lunar surface, and whether it can beat China to the Moon.

Artemis costs remain unclear despite funding boost

The Artemis program has long drawn bipartisan criticism for its murky price tag. “Unless we know what this is going to cost at the end, it would be irresponsible for us to take the first step,” said Rep. José Serrano (D-N.Y.) during a 2019 budget hearing, expressing frustration over the lack of clear financial planning.

President Trump has also voiced skepticism, posting on X in June 2019: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon — We did that 50 years ago.” A January 2024 Government Accountability Office report again flagged transparency issues, noting, “NASA hasn’t established an official cost estimate for Artemis III, so full mission costs aren’t transparent.”

Despite these concerns, the One Big Beautiful Bill signals a bipartisan consensus within Congress that lunar exploration is a national priority and that Artemis remains at the heart of that vision.

ISS and NASA facilities get major investments

Beyond Artemis, the bill invests heavily in NASA’s aging infrastructure and the future of low-Earth-orbit operations. It provides $1.25 billion in funding for the International Space Station (ISS), with a mandate that no less than $250 million be allocated annually from FY 2025 through FY 2029. This stands in sharp contrast to the White House’s FY 2026 budget request, which proposes steep cuts to both ISS operations and onboard research.

The legislation allocates $325 million to fulfill a recently announced contract with SpaceX for the development of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle, a spacecraft designed to safely deorbit the ISS and guide it to a controlled reentry over the Pacific Ocean at the end of its service life in 2030.

Separately, the bill includes $1 billion for facility upgrades across NASA’s primary crewed spaceflight centers, including $300 million for the Johnson Space Center in Houston, $250 million for the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, $120 million for the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, $100 million for the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and $30 million for the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana.

Plan to move shuttle Discovery draws criticism

The bill also includes a controversial provision to relocate the retired space shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia to Space Center Houston. This proposal, championed by U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz of Texas, aims to highlight Houston’s historic role in NASA’s human spaceflight program. 

Cruz said, “Bringing such a historic space vehicle to the region would underscore the city’s indispensable contributions to our space missions, highlight the strength of America’s commercial space partnerships, and inspire future generations of engineers, scientists, and pioneers who will carry our legacy of American leadership in space.”

However, the move has faced criticism from former NASA officials. Lori Garver, who served as the agency’s deputy administrator under President Obama, wrote on X, “We would have to take the Shuttle apart to move it at this point. The aircraft transport was decommissioned and it wouldn’t hold up that distance on a barge or highway (bridges/trees/power lines). If this is the priority for our tax dollars, we are doomed.”

NASA science still hangs in the balance

While the One Big Beautiful Bill represents a lifeline for the Artemis program, it does not address the sweeping cuts under President Trump’s FY2026 budget request to NASA science. The administration’s budget contains a 47 percent cut to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, which, if enacted, would put more than 40 active and future missions at risk of cancellation. The Planetary Society has called such an outcome an “extinction-level event” for U.S. space science.

Congress can still intervene through the normal appropriations process, which determines annual funding for agencies like NASA. The One Big Beautiful Bill is, in political parlance, a reconciliation bill — a special procedure that fast-tracks certain tax and mandatory spending measures with a simple majority vote.

Committees in the House and Senate will now turn their attention to the regular appropriations process, which sets the funding levels for federal agencies each fiscal year. This means lawmakers still have the opportunity to restore or modify the proposed science cuts — though whether they will end up doing so remains uncertain.

New funding secures Artemis, but questions remain

Taken together, the bill shores up Artemis at a moment when its future looks increasingly uncertain. The political message is clear: Congress is willing to commit long-term funding to Artemis, even as critics say the program is floundering.

Whether that vision holds — or gets pulled off course by technical setbacks, shifting political winds, or budgetary tradeoffs — will help shape not just the Artemis timeline, but NASA’s trajectory for the next decade.