NASA has not publicly introduced the astronauts who will fly on Crew-12 subsequent 12 months, however in keeping with sources, it has already assigned veteran astronaut Jessica Meir and newcomer Jack Hathaway, a former US Navy fighter pilot who joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 2021. If these adjustments undergo, presumably one in every of these two can be faraway from the mission.

Will this truly occur?

The cuts are certainly not a certainty. The president’s price range proposal is only the start of a monthslong course of through which the White Home Workplace of Administration and Price range will work with Congress to ascertain funding ranges and programmatic priorities for fiscal 12 months 2026. If this price range course of is like these in years previous, a closing price range might not even be set by the beginning of the fiscal 12 months this October.

Congress has been broadly supportive of the house station, which is slated to fly by means of 2030 earlier than being decommissioned. The Trump White Home nominee to steer NASA, Jared Isaacman, additionally spoke in favor of “maximizing” science on the house station throughout his affirmation listening to final month. In subsequent answers to written questions, Isaacman reaffirmed this place.

“My precedence can be to maximise the remaining worth of the ISS earlier than it’s decommissioned,” Isaacman wrote. “We should prioritize the highest-potential science and analysis that may be carried out on the station—and do every little thing attainable to ‘crack the code’ on an on orbit economic system.”

This remark displays a want to give attention to science that can assist jump-start a business economic system in low-Earth orbit, versus the White Home price range’s want to give attention to analysis associated to the Moon and Mars.

Isaacman has not been confirmed but—that ought to occur throughout the subsequent couple of weeks—so he didn’t have direct enter into setting the White Home price range proposal. That course of was led by Russell Vought, who leads the White Home Workplace of Administration and Price range.