Trump Megabill Includes Billions for Artemis, ISS, Moving A Space Shuttle to Texas And More

The House passed President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” this afternoon. Trump is expected to sign it tomorrow, July 4, a self-imposed deadline Republicans were determined to meet. Dubbed the “megabill” for its far reaching effects on federal spending and revenue, the reconciliation bill (its more common name) includes $10 billion for NASA programs the Trump Administration has proposed cutting in the FY2026 budget request. They include elements of the Artemis program, funding for the International Space Station, as well as $85 million to move the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to Texas.

Over the past week, first the Senate and then the House pulled all-nighters to get the reconciliation bill passed by July 4 giving up most of their week-long July 4 recess that was supposed to begin last Friday, June 27.

Early on Congress was debating whether to deal with Trump’s broad domestic policy agenda all at once or in separate bills and at one point he said he wanted one, big beautiful bill and that became the legislation’s official name: the “One, Big Beautiful Bill Act,” OBBB, and assigned the number H.R. 1.

In the end, despite publicly-expressed misgivings from a number of Republicans, all but three in the Senate and two in the House voted for it. The Senate vote was 50-50, with Vice President Vance casting the tie-breaker to make it 51-50.  Of the 53 Senate Republicans, 50 voted yes. Three voted no along with all Democrats and two independents.

Quite a few House Republicans bitterly complained about changes the Senate made to the House-passed bill and initially vowed not to approve it, but the vote in the House this afternoon was 218-214, with all but two Republicans in favor. All Democrats were opposed. No changes were made to the Senate-passed version.

The original House-passed version of the bill did not address NASA.

The Senate version included sections crafted by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). The final version of the Commerce Committee’s text included everything for NASA that was in the original version plus $85 million to transfer the Space Shuttle Discovery from the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, VA to Houston. The language in the bill is less specific, but Cruz and Texas’s other Senator, John Cornyn (R), already have introduced legislation that makes clear what they intend.

As passed by the Senate and House, the bill provides $10.08 billion ($9.995 billion in the original version plus another $85 million in the revised version) for NASA as follows.

• $700 million for a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) that would be procured through a competitively bid fixed-price contract with a U.S. commercial provider to be delivered by December 31, 2028. The MTO would support both a Mars Sample Return mission as described in the 2017 NASA Transition Authorization Act and future robotic and human Mars missions.
• $2.6 billion to fully fund the international Gateway lunar space station being built in cooperation with Europe, Japan, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates as part of the Artemis program. A section-by-section summary describes Gateway as “critical” for a sustained human presence at the Moon.
• $4.1 billion for SLS rockets for Artemis IV and Artemis V.  The Trump Administration wants to replace SLS with less expensive commercial rockets after the next two launches (Artemis II and III) and the committee notes this funding “does not preclude integrating new, commercial options if and when they become available.”
• $20 million for a fourth Orion crew spacecraft for use with Artemis IV and reuse on subsequent missions.
• $1.25 billion for the ISS to ensure there is no gap between when the ISS ends in 2030 and new commercial space stations are in orbit to replace it. The funding is for “space operations to, from, and on the ISS” of which not less than $250 million per year is to be spent for FY2025, FY2026, FY2027, FY2028, and FY2029.
• $1 billion in “improvements” at five NASA fields centers: Stennis in Mississippi ($120 million), Kennedy in Florida ($250 million), Johnson in Texas ($300 million), Marshall in Alabama ($100 million), and Michoud in Louisiana ($30 million).
• $325 million for the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle to propel the ISS from orbit into the Pacific Ocean at the end of its lifetime. NASA awarded $843 million to SpaceX last year to build the USDV, but that did not include launch. The committee’s bill says the $325 million is to fulfill the contract, but it’s not clear if that’s to cover the launch or additional costs of the USDV itself.
• $85 million for Space Vehicle Transfer for “a space vehicle” to be transferred to a NASA Center involved in the Commercial Crew Program and placed on public exhibition at a non-profit entity not more than 5 miles from that Center. As already noted, Texas Senators Cornyn and Cruz have pending legislation to move Space Shuttle Discovery to Johnson Space Center.

The provisions for the Gateway, SLS, Orion and ISS directly contradict President Trump’s FY2026 budget request. It calls for termination of the Gateway program, ending SLS and Orion after the next two flights (Artemis II and Artemis III) and scaling back utilization of the ISS between now and 2030. That means fewer cargo flights, fewer crew members, and limiting research to only what is needed to support human exploration of the Moon and Mars.

Sen. Cruz is a close Trump ally, putting them at cross-purposes on the Artemis and ISS programs. Whether they’ve reached an understanding that these programs will proceed as the bill specifies isn’t publicly known. The Constitution gives Congress the power of the purse and the Executive Branch is supposed to spend the money as Congress directs, but the Trump Administration is testing those limits.

For the moment, at least, ISS, SLS and Gateway seem to be proceeding nominally.  NASA is getting ready to launch the next crew to ISS, Crew-11, in a few weeks with a typical four-person complement.  Progress is being reported on building a larger version of the Mobile Launcher (ML-2) needed for SLS missions after Artemis III.  Yesterday, Redwire tested the massive Roll-Out Solar Arrays (ROSAs) for the Gateway lunar space station at an event attended by the Gateway’s commercial and international partners.

As for moving Space Shuttle Discovery to Houston, Sen. Cornyn asserts the Obama-era decision on where to put the shuttle orbiters on display “unlawfully ignored” the 2010 NASA Authorization Act in order to “keep Houston from getting one of the shuttles.” Discovery is the only orbiter still owned by the government and hence is his choice to be moved. The two specially-built Shuttle Carrier Aircraft used to transport shuttle orbiters from one location to another are themselves now in museums so how it will get from Virginia to Houston is uncertain. The bill sets aside $5 million of the $85 million for transportation.

NASA went through a laborious process to determine where the four surviving space shuttle orbiters would be permanently located as the program was winding down.  Six orbiters were built. Challenger and Columbia were destroyed in 1986 and 2003, killing their seven-person crews. Discovery was sent to the Smithsonian, Atlantis to Kennedy Space Center, and Endeavour to the California Science Center in Los Angeles. Enterprise, a test vehicle that never made a spaceflight, went to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City.

NASA had received expressions of interest from 29 organizations and formed a team of civil servants to review the applications and make recommendations. On April 12, 2011, then-Administrator Charlie Bolden announced the selections. An August 2011 review by NASA’s Office of Inspector General found “the decisions regarding Orbiter placement were the result of an Agency-created process that emphasized above all other considerations locating the Orbiters in places where the most people would have the opportunity to view them. The Agency was not required to and did not consider a location’s ties to the Space Shuttle Program but, as directed by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, considered whether the chosen locations had a connection to NASA’s human spaceflight program.”

Reconciliation is separate from appropriations and money allocated through reconciliation is in addition to it. The House and Senate have been focused on reconciliation and progress on the FY2026 appropriations bills is slower than usual.

The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to mark up the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NASA on Monday, July 7, at subcommittee level and July 10 at full committee. They have not held a NASA hearing yet, though. Today they delayed the CJS markup to a later time yet to be determined.

The Senate Appropriations Committee, however, will mark up their CJS bill on July 10.  They also have not held a hearing on NASA’s request.

 

This article has been updated.