**Feud Between Trump and Musk Threatens NASA’s Future Amid Major Budget Cuts**

A growing dispute between former President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has intensified concerns over NASA's financial future, with significant budget reductions looming. The space agency has revealed its latest budget request to Congress, proposing nearly a 50% cut in funding for science projects, which threatens to halt 40 ongoing and planned missions.

The tension has also brought potential disruptions to NASA's reliance on SpaceX for vital operations such as resupplying the International Space Station with its Falcon 9 rockets, and future ambitions to use the Starship rocket for lunar and Martian missions.

Dr. Simeon Barber from the Open University has highlighted the negative impact of the uncertainty on the human space program, describing recent erratic decisions as damaging to the foundational cooperation between governmental, commercial, and academic entities crucial for long-term space exploration.

Meanwhile, NASA's budget, if slashed as proposed, would pivot sharply towards Trump's objective of placing astronauts on the Moon before China and eventually reaching Mars, sidelining other scientific endeavors. Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society characterized these cuts as "the biggest crisis ever to face the US space programme."

While some argue the proposed budget gives NASA a clear mission reminiscent of the Apollo era’s lunar race against the Soviet Union, critics say it worsens the agency’s historical issues of over-expenditures and inefficiencies, pointing to the costly delays of the Space Launch System (SLS) as a prime example.

The revision plans to replace the problematic SLS with Elon Musk's Starship and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin’s New Glenn, both of which promise lower costs but face their own development challenges. This shift has researchers worried that the agency could be moving from one costly issue to another untested solution.

Dr. Barber expressed particular concern about the potential cessation of numerous planetary and climate-monitoring missions, including collaborative projects with the European Space Agency (ESA). The disruptions could significantly impact projects like returning Martian samples or deploying the Rosalind Franklin Rover.

Amid these challenges, voices like Prof. Sir Martin Sweeting of Surrey Satellite Technology suggest that Europe might benefit by gaining more autonomy in its space projects, though the short-term fallout could be severe.

The proposed cuts could also endanger Earth observation programs, essential for monitoring climate change, which Dr. Baker likens to a "canary in the coal mine."

ESA, aiming to strengthen its independence, indicated plans to continue global partnerships, possibly without NASA, amidst these turbulent times for space exploration.