NASA Wants to Cancel 53 Missions. Congress Says No. The Hardware Builders Are Already Leaving.

JPL engineers are leaving because the missions they spent careers building are being canceled. Congress just told the administration no — for the second time in four months.

Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, appeared before the House Science Committee on April 22 to defend a budget that would cut 53 science missions, gut science funding nearly 50 percent, and cancel Veritas — the Venus radar mapper that would be the first U.S. mission to Venus in more than three decades. His argument: cutting science is how you fund getting Americans to the Moon before China. "We cannot establish programs designed to be too big to fail, but at the same time too costly to succeed," he told the committee. "Nor should it be throwing more money at the problem."

Congress was not persuaded. Chairman Brian Babin, a Republican from Texas and self-described budget hawk, called the cuts short-sighted: "Shortchanging NASA is simply not smart." Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren noted the timing: the FY2027 request dropped while the Artemis II crew was 99,900 miles from Earth, three days into their lunar flyby. She called it "not a welcome home message."

This is the second time Congress has heard this argument. In January 2026, it rejected a similar proposal and enacted $24.4 billion for NASA instead of the $19 billion the administration requested. The FY2027 request is back in the same form: an 18.8 billion dollar request, 23 percent below the current level, science cut from 7.3 billion to 3.9 billion.

The programs on the cancellation list read like a roll call of active deep-space and Earth-observing hardware. Veritas, the Venus mapper, on the cancellation list for the second consecutive year. Juno, the Jupiter orbiter that has been operating in the outer solar system for nine years. New Horizons, the APL-built spacecraft that gave humanity its first close look at Pluto and is still flying in the Kuiper Belt. Perseverance, the Mars rover, whose operations would be slowed rather than shut down. The Atmosphere Observing System, a climate satellite.

According to the LA Times, JPL has absorbed multiple rounds of layoffs over the past two years, the defunding of the Mars Sample Return mission it was designed to lead, and a quiet exodus of experienced engineers who see the direction of travel. Those who remain are licensing JPL technology to private companies and increasing commercial output to demonstrate relevance. "If we're not doing science, then what are we doing?" one former JPL employee asked. They left after more than a decade at the lab.

The workforce problem is not rhetorical. Hardware programs require decades of specialized expertise — guidance systems, radiation hardening, precision instrumentation, thermal management for deep space. These skills do not transfer easily to defense contractors or commercial space. When engineers leave, the programs they were building die with them.

Isaacman's theory is that cutting science funds the Moon. The commercial space industry NASA has spent fifteen years cultivating is downstream of the same talent pipeline these cuts target. SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the emerging cluster of lunar cargo providers are not separate from NASA's engineering workforce — they are drawing from it. Cutting that pipeline does not redirect engineers to Artemis; it disperses them into adjacent industries where they will be unavailable when Artemis needs them.

Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, put it plainly: "There's no rhyme or reason to it." Veritas has been on the cancellation list for two consecutive years. The scientists and engineers who would have built it are making other plans.

Congress will probably override this budget, as it did the last one. But the hardware programs do not pause while Washington argues. Contractors wind down activity on missions they suspect will be cancelled. Engineers update their resumes. The pipeline of future missions — the ones that would launch in the 2030s and 2040s — is being dismantled in real time, in plain sight, by a process that is technically being resolved by Congress but practically being decided by the people choosing not to wait around to find out.