Overview

• The administration’s FY 26 budget blueprint instructs NASA to begin formal shutdown planning for free-flying OCO-2 and to end federal funding for ISS-mounted OCO-3 by Sept. 30
• NASA has launched Phase F procedures for OCO-2 deorbit planning while issuing a short-term solicitation for external sponsors to sustain OCO-3 operations
• Maintaining both missions costs about $15 million per year, a small fraction of their roughly $750 million combined development and launch investment
• Retired NASA scientist David Crisp and Democratic lawmakers warn that cancelling satellites already financed could violate Congress’s power of the purse and amount to unlawful impoundment
• Congress has until the close of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30 to enact funding measures or riders that could reverse the shutdown directives