Futurism: As NPR reports, Trump officials reached out to the space agency to draw up plans for terminating the two missions, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatories. They’ve been collecting widely-used data, providing both oil and gas companies and farmers with detailed information about the distribution of carbon dioxide and how it can affect crop health. One is attached to the International Space Station, and the other is collecting data as a stand-alone satellite. The latter would meet its permanent demise after burning up in the atmosphere if the mission were to be terminated. We can only speculate as to why the Trump administration wants to end the missions. But considering president Donald Trump’s staunch climate change denial and his administration’s efforts to deal the agency’s science directorate a potentially existential blow, it’s not difficult to speculate. Worse yet, the two observatories had been expected to function for many more years, scientists working on them told NPR. A 2023 review by NASA concluded that the data they’d been providing had been “of exceptionally high quality.”

…The two observatories are only two of dozens of space missions facing existential threats in the form of the Trump administration’s proposed 2026 fiscal year budget. Countless scientists have been outraged by the proposal, arguing it could precipitate an end to the United States’ leadership in space. Lawmakers have since drawn up a counteroffer that would keep NASA’s budget roughly in line with this year’s. “We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions,” said senator and top appropriator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) in a July statement, as quoted by Bloomberg. Simply terminating Earth-monitoring missions to pursue an anti-science agenda could be a massive self-own, lawmakers say — and potentially breaking laws as well by overriding existing, allocated budgets. “Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters,” House representative and Committee on Science, Space and Technology ranking member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told NPR. “The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds,” she added. “This is illegal.”

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