Nature to Congress: $300 Million a Year for the Universe’s Greatest Eyes Is a Steal
Featured image: [Composite of Hubble and JWST images showing their complementary views of the universe; credit: NASA/ESA/STScI]
Nature, one of the world’s most influential scientific journals, published an extraordinary editorial on July 7 urging Congress to renew funding for both the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, warning that budget cuts could effectively shutter humanity’s two most powerful windows on the cosmos just as they are delivering their best science.
The editorial, published as an unsigned institutional statement representing Nature’s editorial voice, makes a blunt economic argument: the two telescopes cost roughly $300 million per year combined to operate, about 0.04 percent of NASA’s annual budget, and deliver disproportionate scientific returns that no other facility can match.
“These are small numbers given the immense scientific return,” the editorial states. “To not renew them would be like building a transformative AI technology and then disconnecting it from the Internet so it couldn’t be used.”
The threat in dollars
Hubble faces a 20 percent budget cut in the proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, which would reduce its annual operations from roughly $98 million to between $83 million and $87.8 million. Its budget has remained essentially flat for a decade, meaning inflation has already eroded its spending power by 30 percent, according to Neill Reid, Multi-Mission Project Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
JWST, still in its prime mission with an estimated 20-plus years of fuel remaining thanks to a precise launch, faces a proposed 25 percent cut from $187 million to $140 million. STScI is preparing for a 25 to 35 percent reduction in science operations next year.
“There was a sound amount of optimism that went into some of those budget estimates, and there’s also been inflation,” Reid said. “So then you have the presidential budget request that comes in and cuts more. So we may be looking at reducing operations by 25 to 35 percent next year.”
The broader context is a Trump administration budget proposal that sought to slash NASA’s science directorate by roughly 47 percent, though Congress has signaled it will push back with legislation to increase basic research funding by 2 percent instead.
What’s at stake
JWST has been operating for just four years since its first images were released in July 2022. In that time it has discovered the faintest, most distant galaxies ever observed, peered through dusty cocoons to watch planets being born, found small black holes that challenge formation theories, and measured the chemical composition of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Its proposals are oversubscribed nine times over.
Hubble, now 35 years old, remains one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built. It discovered dark energy, measured the first exoplanet atmosphere, and still generates proposals at six times the available observing time. Its last servicing mission was in 2009, and no shuttle exists to service it again, but it continues to produce cutting-edge science.
The timing of the threat is particularly painful: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory just began its 10-year survey, and the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is set to launch in August 2026. These are wide-field survey telescopes that identify targets across the sky. Hubble and JWST are the zoom lenses needed to examine those targets in detail.
“JWST has just one more year of prime mission operations before NASA must approve an extension,” the editorial notes. “The agency is also considering whether and how to end another flagship observatory: the Hubble Space Telescope.”
A generation without UV eyes
A successor to Hubble that can observe in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will not launch before 2040. If Hubble’s operations end, the United States will have no ultraviolet or optical space telescope capability for at least a generation.
Rogier Windhorst, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University, published a companion piece in Nature the same day titled “Save Hubble: the race to preserve the space telescope kicks off,” adding his voice to the growing advocacy campaign.
The editorial’s closing line captures the stakes: “In an era of global cutbacks and threats to basic science, both Hubble and JWST radiate achievement. That can be an example to any scientific leader, in any discipline, who wants to get a highly ambitious project off the ground.”