LAS VEGAS — Industry officials issued a stark warning that proposed NASA budget cuts to the International Space Station could jeopardize both the operation of the station and the transition to commercial space stations.
NASA’s detailed fiscal year 2026 budget request released May 30 proposed cutting the ISS operations budget by about 25% to $920 million, while the budget for crew and cargo transportation to the station would be reduced by the same percentage to $1.21 billion.
“ISS is replanning with a focus on maintaining minimal safe operations and very limited research essential to support Moon and Mars exploration until its retirement in 2030,” the budget document states. It added NASA was considering reductions in crew size and cadence of crew and cargo missions.
The proposed cuts exacerbate what NASA officials described in May as “a cumulative multi-year budget reduction” for the ISS that has reduced the number of cargo missions and led NASA to consider going from four astronauts in the U.S. segment of the station to three.
Dan Tani, a business development director at Northrop Grumman and a former astronaut, noted on a panel at the AIAA ASCEND conference here July 24 that his company had traditionally flown two Cygnus cargo missions a year to the ISS, but that rate is being reduced to about three flights every two years.
“That is putting a stretch not only on our production rate but also our suppliers, who are screaming and claiming they can’t go much less than that,” he said. “We have concerns about our workforce and our supplier base.”
Such problems are the result of decisions made by NASA and Congress over the last few years on ISS funding, noted Jared Stout, chief global policy officer at Axiom Space. “We’re all reacting now because we’re seeing the effects of it, but the truth is that, as a community, we ignored the warning signs over the last few years.”
However, the cuts in the fiscal year 2026 request, if enacted, would make a bad problem much worse, other industry officials said. Christian Maender, senior executive at Barrios Technology, a company that does engineering and program integration work for the ISS program, said those cuts would force his company to lay off up to 100 employees.
“Because of this budget uncertainty that’s unfolding, we’re already seeing some our best talent depart,” he said. “What happens when you lose that talent? You permanently damage the ability to continue the work that has been done on the space station, even if Congress comes back with an FY ’26 budget that is sustainable.”
The cuts would also sharply limit what could be done on the station itself. “I think it’s not too dramatic to say if we cut the way that the president’s budget request suggests,” he said, “for the next four years we will have astronauts flying to the space station as custodians and caretakers of a mothballed facility.”
That could also affect the transition to commercial space stations, also known as commercial LEO destinations or CLDs, planned for the end of the decade as the ISS approaches retirement.
“It’s imperative that we maintain the ISS and fully utilize it through that transition,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of commercial crew at Boeing. That included keeping “pipelines” of crew transportation, cargo transportation and science. “It’s incredibly important that the CLDs have all of those, because if they don’t there’s no way they can be successful.”
There are geopolitical implications as well, with some arguing that it would allow China to attract companies and countries to work on the Tiangong space station. “If we follow the PBR,” or president’s budget request, said Mike Gold, president of civil and international space at Redwire, “Beijing will be very happy.”
There are signs that Congress is pushing back against the proposed cuts. House and Senate appropriations bills for fiscal year 2026 keep funding for ISS operations flat compared to 2025. The budget reconciliation bill enacted earlier this month included $1.25 billion over five years for ISS operations. It also provided $385 million to fund production of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle needed to deorbit the station at the end of its life.
“Democracy is working and our congressional representatives are standing up for this,” Gold said, specifically thanking Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, who included the NASA funding in the reconciliation bill. He added, though, that the work to secure funding for ISS operations was not done. “We are in a tactical flight to survive.”
David Radzanowski, chair of the board of the ISS National Laboratory and a former NASA chief financial officer, offered a more cautionary note. “The $1.25 billion is a great signal, but it all depends on what that is on top of,” he said. “If it’s on top of the current level, fantastic. If it’s on top of the president’s budget request, it still doesn’t make up for where we are today.”
The space community has often talked about avoiding a gap between the ISS and commercial space stations, but Heath Mills, chief scientific officer at Rhodium Scientific, a company that supports ISS research, said that is the wrong metaphor. “A gap says there’s something on the other side,” he said. Instead, “you’re losing workforce, you’re losing talent, you’re losing momentum and sending it overseas.”
“You’re not producing a gap,” he concluded, “you’re a producing a cliff that our industry will fall off of.”