NASA's Arizona science spend
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NASA spends hundreds of millions of dollars per state on average annually through its scientific missions, and Arizona is among the country's biggest recipients, a recent analysis shows.
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."
Between the lines: Trump's proposed NASA science cuts fit into a broader pattern of pulling resources away from scientific endeavors and data collection, especially involving climate change.