NASA cut $420 million for climate science, moon modelling and more
Under pressure from Elon Musk’s DOGE task force, NASA is cancelling grants and contracts for everything from lunar dust research to educational programmes
By Jeremy Hsu
1 April 2025
NASA funding cuts are already affecting research and educational programs across the US
DCStockPhotography/Shutterstock
NASA has cancelled contracts and grants worth up to $420 million, following guidance from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The cuts will impact research projects and educational programmes across the US, but NASA is being tight-lipped about confirming exactly which organisations are affected.
After DOGE, an independent task force led in effect by tech billionaire Elon Musk, announced the cuts, NASA confirmed the amount but refused to specify which programmes were cancelled. Casey Dreier at The Planetary Society, a non-profit organisation based in California, compiled a list of programmes that recently lost funding using the agency’s public grant database. NASA has since taken down the database and did not respond to questions about the list’s accuracy.
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Many of the cuts on Dreier’s list align with President Donald Trump’s scepticism towards climate science and his administration’s aggressive targeting of its interpretation of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes.
Climate-related cancellations include a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that uses satellite sensors to map the impacts of extreme heat, air pollution and flooding on prisons. Another target was University of Oklahoma research to develop digital twin simulations that predict the effects of floods on tribal lands.
But it is unclear why NASA may have ended support for other research, such as using bioengineered cells to examine how spaceflight affects the human body or modelling how lunar dust could contaminate future moon missions.
