NASA's Arizona science spend
Why it matters: The space agency's science efforts bear the brunt of the cuts in the Trump administration's proposed budget, down nearly 50% to $3.9 billion.
The big picture: Science represents about 30% of NASA's overall budget and includes missions like space telescopes, robotic probes and satellites that gather data about Earth's changing climate.
While not always as headline-grabbing as human spaceflight, NASA's science activity has greatly enhanced our understanding of Earth and our celestial neighborhood.
By the numbers: From 2022-2024, Arizona averaged the 10th most direct investment from NASA science spending in the country at $120 million per year, and had the ninth most overall spending last year with nearly $107 million, per data from The Planetary Society, a pro-space nonprofit.
Nearly half the money in that three-year period ($58 million) went to Arizona's 7th Congressional District, home to the University of Arizona's main campus.
Threat level: The Trump administration's proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year would cut nearly $57 million in spending from the state.
That would "severely curtail research" at University of Arizona and Arizona State University, The Planetary Society warns, putting 566 jobs at risk and jeopardizing $158 million in economic activity.
Zoom out: California (About $3 billion), Maryland ($2 billion), Texas ($614 million), Virginia ($612 million) and Alabama ($586 million) saw the most NASA science spending on average annually across fiscal 2022-2024.
Each is home to major NASA facilities.
Those numbers represent obligations involving "research grants, contracts and cooperative agreements," the group says.
Zoom in: Missions on the chopping block in Trump's NASA budget include the New Horizons spacecraft (first launched to study Pluto and now in the outer solar system) and Mars Sample Return, an ambitious joint American-European plan to collect Martian soil samples gathered by the Perseverance rover and bring them to Earth for further study.
Nearly 20 active science missions would be canceled in total, the Planetary Society says, representing more than $12 billion in taxpayer investments.
What they're saying: A chief concern, Planetary Society chief of space policy Casey Dreier tells Axios, is that already paid-for probes and telescopes would be deactivated even though they're still delivering valuable data, wasting taxpayer dollars already spent to launch and run them.
"This is the part where you get pennies on the dollar return," Dreier says. "They keep returning great science for the very fractional cost to keep the lights on. And a lot of these will just be turned off and left to tumble in space."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US sanctions more ICC judges, prosecutors for probes into alleged American, Israeli war crimes
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on the International Criminal Court for pursuing investigations into U.S. and Israeli officials for alleged war crimes. The State Department on Wednesday announced new sanctions on four ICC officials, including two judges and two prosecutors, who it said had been instrumental in efforts to prosecute Americans and Israelis. As a result of the sanctions, any assets the targets hold in U.S. jurisdictions are frozen. The sanctions are just the latest in a series of steps the administration has taken against The Hague-based court, the world's first international war crimes tribunal. The U.S. has already imposed penalties on the ICC's former chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who stepped aside in May pending an investigation into alleged sexual misconduct, and four other tribunal judges. In a statement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he had taken action against ICC judges Kimberly Proust of Canada and Nicolas Guillou of France and prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal. 'These individuals are foreign persons who directly engaged in efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute nationals of the United States or Israel, without the consent of either nation,' Rubio said. He added that the administration would continue 'to take whatever actions we deem necessary to protect our troops, our sovereignty, and our allies from the ICC's illegitimate and baseless actions.' In a separate statement, the State Department said Prost was hit for ruling to authorize an ICC investigation into U.S. personnel in Afghanistan, which was later dropped. Guillou was sanctioned for ruling to authorize the ICC's issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant related to Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Khan and Niang were penalized for continuing Karim Khan's investigation into Israel's actions in Gaza, including upholding the ICC's arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, according to the statement. Wednesday's move carries on a history of Trump administration actions against the ICC, of which the U.S. is not a member, dating back to his first term in office. During Trump's first term, the U.S. hit the ICC with sanctions, but those were rescinded by President Joe Biden's administration in early 2021.
New York Post
28 minutes ago
- New York Post
Democrats facing crisis as more than 2M voters leave party in four years: analysis
The Democratic Party is bleeding registered voters, suffering a 4.5 million swing against it that could take years to recover from, according to a new report. Between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, Democrats lost about 2.1 million voters across the 30 states that track registration by political party, according to a New York Times analysis of data gathered by the L2 tracking firm. Over the same period, the Republican Party gained 2.4 million registered voters. Officially, there are still more registered Democrats than Republicans nationwide, but that number is incomplete because blue states like California and New York allow voters to register by party — as does the District of Columbia — while reliably red states like Texas, Missouri and Ohio do not. Most alarmingly for Democrats, the decline is nationwide, with the US seeing more new voters registering with the GOP in 2024 for the first time in six years. Democrats also saw their registered voter advantage dwindle in four 2024 battleground states — Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania — all of which President Trump carried this past Nov. 5. Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters in the 30 states that track registration by political party. AP Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, warned that the numbers not only help explain Trump's victory last year — in which he became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote in 20 years — but also forecast significant headwinds for Democrats in next year's midterm elections as well as the 2028 presidential vote. 'I don't want to say, 'The death cycle of the Democratic Party,'' Pruser told the Times, 'but there seems to be no end to this.' 'There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year,' he added. In North Carolina, Democrats lost 115,523 voters between the 2020 and 2024 election, with Republicans gaining more than 140,000 members and erasing the Dems' registration advantage, according to the L2 data. More new voters registered to be Republican than Democrat last year, the first time since 2018. Michael Nagle Democrats suffered similar losses in Arizona and Pennsylvania, while in Nevada — a state whose politics were long dominated by the Las Vegas-based Culinary Workers Union — the share of registered Democrats suffered the second-steepest plunge of those states measured between 2020 and 2024. (Only deep-red West Virginia saw more precipitous losses.). Even Democratic bastions like New York and California were not safe from voter erosion, with Dems losing 305,922 registered voters in the Empire State in between the two elections. In California, Democrats lost 680,556 voters between 2020 and 2024. All in all, Democrats went from enjoying an advantage of nearly 11 percentage points over Republicans in registered voter numbers in 2020 to just over six percentage points across the 30 states and DC in 2024, the Times found. Experts believe that the fall of new Democratic registrations can be linked to the growing number of voters choosing to be independents or unaffiliated, a trend that is sapping both parties' rolls. In 2018, more than one-third (34%) of new voter registrations nationwide were Democrats, while registered Republicans made up just 20% of new voters. As of last year, however, Republicans had erased that gap, with party supporters making up 29% of new voters, while Democrats made up 26% of new voters.
The Hill
28 minutes ago
- The Hill
Stephen Miller blasts ‘stupid white hippies' protesting DC crackdown
Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller on Wednesday railed against what he called 'stupid white hippies' who were protesting the federal crackdown on crime in the nation's capital and argued they did not represent the citizens of Washington, D.C. Miller, Vice President Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited Union Station on Wednesday, where National Guard troops have been stationed outside for days in a show of force near the transportation hub. 'We are not going to let the communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation's capital,' Miller told the crowd near Shake Shack inside Union Station. 'And let's just also address another thing. All these demonstrators you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been. And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black.' 'So we're going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old,' he added. 'And we're going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.' The Trump administration earlier this month began surging federal law enforcement across parts of the district to crack down on what the White House said was an unacceptable level of crime, despite statistics showing violent crime has declined in the city. Last week, Trump took federal control of the Metropolitan Police Department and deployed hundreds of National Guard troops across the city to further the crack down on crime. The White House has said officers across the district have made more than 550 arrests since the surge in federal resources began on Aug. 7. But local residents have largely expressed disapproval with the aggressive moves from the federal government. A Washington Post-Schar School poll of 604 D.C. residents published Wednesday found 65 percent do not think Trump's actions will make the city safer. Roughly 80 percent of residents said they opposed Trump's executive order to federalize the city's police department.
