Science & Technology · The Record
NASA's picture of the day runs a comet beside a star cluster as budget request seeks roughly 46% Science cut
NASA Science would fall from $7.25 billion to $3.89 billion under the fiscal 2027 request the White House budget office released on April 3 - three months after Congress funded the same account at $7.25 billion. The Astronomy Picture of the Day, edited since 1995, carries an image of comet 10P/Tempel 2 next to the cluster M30.
A page on NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day site, read for this piece on August 10, 2026, carries an image titled "A Messier Moment for Tempel 2", credited on the page to Dan Bartlett. NASA's text states the frame was "Recorded on July 29". It shows two small, faint patches side by side. One is the coma of periodic comet 10P/Tempel 2. The other is the globular star cluster Messier 30, which NASA's page identifies as the 30th entry in Charles Messier's catalog.
The two objects have nothing to do with each other. On the page's own figures, Tempel 2 was 3.5 light-minutes away and Messier 30 is some 28,000 light-years distant. What the picture records is a line of sight, not a meeting.
The reason the pairing is worth a picture is a matter of instrument limits. A comet close to home and a star cluster far outside it both resolve, in a small telescope, into the same thing: a fuzzy patch that is not a point of light. NASA's page notes that Messier, an 18th century comet hunter, kept a list of objects that held their positions against the background stars from one night to the next, which told him they were not the comets he wanted. The catalogue that carries his name is, in the page's phrasing, a "catalog of things which are not comets". Two centuries later the same optical ambiguity is the joke in the caption.
The record half
APOD's about page, published by NASA Science, states that the project "is based upon work supported by NASA under award No. 80NSSC17M0076" and that it has been "originated, written, coordinated, and edited since 1995 by Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell". That is a named funding instrument with a public identifier and a 1995 start date.
The budget picture around NASA science is a different document. The Planetary Society's analysis of the fiscal 2027 President's Budget Request states that it "was released on April 3" and tabulates NASA's Science line as "Science | 7,250.00 | 3,893.90 | -46%", against a total agency line falling from $24,438.30 million to $18,829.10 million.
SpaceNews reported that the White House Office of Management and Budget released the top-level proposal on April 3 at $18.8 billion for NASA, "a 23% reduction from what the agency received in a final fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill in January". SpaceNews put the Science reduction at "$3.4 billion, or 47%" and quoted the request's own justification: "The Budget terminates over 40 low-priority missions to transform the Science program into one that is more focused and fiscally responsible."
The January bill is the comparison that matters. The Planetary Society reported of that legislation: "For NASA Science, the budget only trims 1% off the topline, bringing it to $7.25 billion."
So the request is not new. SpacePolicyOnline.com reported that for fiscal 2027 "the agency would be cut 23 percent to $18.8 billion, the same level the White House proposed for FY2026" - the level Congress did not enact.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was asked about the request on CBS News's "Face the Nation" transcript of April 5, 2026, in which he is recorded as saying: "Yeah, so I certainly support President Trump and, and his 2027 budget".
SpacePolicyOnline.com's report on the House Science Committee's response to the request quotes objections raised at that hearing, including "Cuts totaling $5.6 billion or 23% from the FY2026 enacted level is not wise" and "Shortchanging NASA is simply not smart." The snapshot of that report read for this piece is a set of quoted fragments and does not label which member or witness said which line, so no speaker is named here.
Analysis
Analysis: the same request is described in the record two ways that pull against each other. The Administrator is on the CBS transcript supporting it; the request's own justification, as quoted by SpaceNews, describes what it does as terminating over 40 missions on grounds of low priority. Both can be true only if the missions being ended are ones nobody counts as a priority, and no document read for this piece lists which 40 they are. Until that list is public, the two statements cannot be reconciled by a reader; they can only be held next to each other.
Analysis: the two figures published for the Science cut do not agree. The Planetary Society's table gives -46% (7,250.00 to 3,893.90, which is the arithmetic those two numbers produce); SpaceNews gives 47%. Neither source reconciles the difference, and this piece uses the figure that follows from the published line items.
What the record read here does not establish
APOD is published under NASA award No. 80NSSC17M0076, and the fiscal 2027 request would reduce NASA's Science account by roughly 46%. No source read for this piece states which budget account carries that award, and none states that the award is among the terminations. The connection between this particular product and this particular cut is therefore an inference about a division and its output, not a documented line-item fact, and it is offered as such.
Two further limits: the snapshot of the APOD page carries the image, the credit and the caption but no printed publication date, so the edition is identified here by its title and by the July 29 recording date in its own text. The snapshot of the CBS transcript carries the quoted sentence but no speaker tag or broadcast date on the page body; the attribution to Administrator Isaacman rests on the transcript page's identification rather than on a line label, and it is reported at that confidence.
A checkable prediction
Congress enacted $7.25 billion for NASA Science for fiscal 2026 after a request at roughly the same reduced topline now proposed for fiscal 2027. Prediction: whatever appropriation Congress enacts for NASA Science for fiscal 2027 will be closer to $7.25 billion than to the $3,893.9 million requested. Checkable by March 31, 2027 against the enacted figure.
Right of reply
No comment request has been logged with NASA, with the Office of Management and Budget, or with Administrator Isaacman for this piece, and none of the statements quoted above are new: each is reproduced from a published document or transcript cited here. Daily Pol's practice is that a human documents any contact request before publication, and this piece carries no such record. Dan Bartlett, credited on the image, is a private individual with no part in the budget dispute and is named here only as the picture's author.