Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Looking back: Space policy and advocacy in 2025

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

2025 was one of the most consequential years for space policy in modern U.S. history. In this special year-in-review episode, Planetary Radio takes a deep dive into what happened behind the scenes in U.S. space policy and advocacy as NASA faced unprecedented proposed cuts to its science programs. With nearly half of NASA’s science budget at risk, dozens of missions threatened, and months of leadership uncertainty at the agency, this year became a defining moment for the future of space science. Sarah Al-Ahmed is joined by Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, Jack Kiraly, director of government relations, and Ari Koeppel, an AAAS science & technology policy fellow, to unpack how this crisis unfolded and how scientists, space advocates, and lawmakers responded. Together, they explore how public advocacy helped shift the conversation in Congress. Plus, in What’s Up, Chief Scientist Bruce Betts explains why stability matters so much for space science and what’s at stake when long-term missions are disrupted. This is the first of two special year-end episodes. Next week, Planetary Radio will look back at what humanity accomplished in space exploration in 2025, from new missions and discoveries to milestones across our Solar System and beyond. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2025-looking-back-space-policy-and-advocacySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A year of historic threats, unprecedented advocacy, and a reminder that the future of space exploration is something we have to fight for. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. 2020 was one of the most consequential years for U.S. space policy in modern history. The White House proposed the largest single-year cut to NASA in the agency's lifetime, nearly halving NASA's science budget. Dozens of active missions were suddenly on the chopping block. Entire scientific fields were put at risk,

and the future of U.S. leadership in space science was thrown into uncertainty. But what happened next tells a very different story. This week, we're looking back at a year that galvanized the global space community. I'm joined by Casey Dreyer, the Planetary Society's Chief of Space Policy, Jack Corelli, our Director of Government Relations, and Ari Kopel, our first ever AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow. They'll break down what actually happened behind the scenes in Washington, D.C., how Congress responded to these threats to NASA science,

and why public advocacy played such a critical role in pushing back against these cuts. We'll talk about the unprecedented scale of this year's advocacy efforts, how a three-person policy team helped shift the national conversation, and what comes next as NASA faces continuing uncertainty headed into 2026? Plus, in our what's up segment, Bruce Betts, our chief scientists and I, are going to reflect on the impact that these kind of cuts can have in the long term, and why we at the Planetary Society will never, never stop fighting for the future of space science and exploration. If you love planetary radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries

and the forces that shape them, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. This wasn't just another tough budget year. We've seen some hard times in the past, but this was something else. The proposed cuts to NASA's science were the largest ever suggested, 47%. Basically, an extinction-level event for NASA science, as Casey called it.

These proposed cuts came with extraordinary uncertainty about whether, even under a continuing resolution, NASA would actually be allowed to spend the money Congress approved. For the space science community, 2025 felt less like a policy debate and more like an existential moment. That's why at the end of this year, we're doing something a little different. Normally, we wrap things up with a single episode looking back at everything that happened across space exploration. But because this year was so pivotal in the fight to save NASA science, I decided to split that reflection in two. This episode focuses entirely on space policy and advocacy. And next week, we're going to be looking back at what humanity actually accomplished in

space exploration in 2025. This conversation also comes at a key moment for NASA itself. Literally, as we were recording this conversation, the agency finally gained a confirmed administrator after months of leadership uncertainty, adding yet another layer to an already turbulent year. So I started our conversation by asking a simple but essential question. What made 2025 so difficult?

And why did it demand such an extraordinary response from advocates, scientists, and space fans around the world. Here's my conversation with our space policy team, including Casey Dreyer, our chief of space policy, Jack Corelli, our Director of Government Relations, and Dr. Ari Coppell, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow here at the Planetary Society. Hey, everyone, happy almost end of the year. Hey, Sarah, happy end to 2025. I kind of feel, is anyone else limping across the finish line?

Oh, gosh, so much. This year. Absolutely. It's been a bit of a busy year for us. It's been a very interesting time in funding for NASA. Just all the things that have happened this year have really put a lot of pressure on this team. But also, this has been our absolute moment to shine. This is the reason why our organization was created.

And watching all of you work together, both you, Jack and Casey, but then also the addition of Ari to our team has been absolutely inspired. this year. And of all the people that I know in this world right now, I'm just so pleased and proud to know you guys after seeing what's happened this year. Let me just say I'm also very proud to be the addition next to these two guys. Learning every day, something new about space advocacy, learning new skills. It's been just an exceptional journey even in these first few months of working with them. Also, it's been wonderful seeing you join the team and get to go on these adventures, but also the expertise that you've brought in with your background. So, I don't know,

the fact that all you guys have been working together, how much we've gotten accomplished together, the fact that we've had to spin off a new planetary society office in D.C. in in order to back up all these efforts, it's just been a banner year for space policy, which is why we don't usually do an extra show just on space policy at the end of the year. But if we were ever going to do it, 2025 would be the moment. I mean, I've been, I mean, obviously just a short I'm proud of the work that we've done, but I also want to highlight just the work that our members have done and the wildly committed engagement that they've had on this issue. We can, Jack can go through some of the numbers, but our members and support has really stepped up this year too. And, you know, as most of them know, we aren't anything without them.

They enable us to exist in many different ways. But it was extraordinary and frankly, just really inspiring for us and really helpful during some of those long. longer slogs when we'd get a nice email or we'd go to do the day of action and see them and see like that energy and commitment to be there and to be part of this. It was also truly extraordinary. We've been covering this ongoing saga for an entire year, but some people may have missed some of the things that have happened in space policy this year. So just to give some context, what made this year so difficult for the space policy community and just for NASA budgeting in general? Well, I think the largest single year cuts ever proposed to NASA and NASA science.

That's the core. Mixed with, I'd say, aggressive effort to call the number of people working at NASA and to radically change how a lot of NASA works very quickly with no engagement to the community and no broader, clear strategy. And so it really threw the workforce for a loop, it threw scientists for a loop, but also just that they were watching the potential. potential future. And we were watching our potential future of scientific exploration. But even missions, you know, the Artemis, I'd say, was kind of questionable there for a while after the landing, potentially just disappear. And that is a reminder. It's in some ways it kind of shook us out of maybe some complacency that this stuff just happens. It doesn't. And we really reminded about why we care about this, kind of the unifying activity of the exploration of space that we do together. that elevates our highest values and gives us access to it. I always say, what other government agency gives us access to the sublime, right? That's a pretty rare thing.

But also so many other benefits as well. And that core, though, of willing to destroy, I think, so much. And also to see it not implemented, there wasn't any broader strategy or policy goal. This was different factions of this administration doing their own thing and, frankly, undermining even the administration's own stated goals. And so really trying to clarify and remind everyone, this is why we do it. But I'd say we're still in a significant era of uncertainty with this. But we're in a much stronger position now than we were at the beginning of the year.

Yeah, we went to Washington, D.C. for our first day of action earlier this year. And at the time, Casey, you and I did a show in Washington, D.C., called The Future of Space Policy. And at that time, we had gotten some inklings of what was coming down the pipeline here. but we hadn't actually seen what was, you know, the official presidential budget request. And then in the context of that, I remember people being very skeptical that any of those cuts were actually going to go through. And even myself, it didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense that the administration that in its previous iteration had created the Artemis program, also within the Office of Management and Budget, had these forces trying to make all these cuts. So I understood people's skepticism, but once it became apparent that this was actually the situation we were graphic. with, it was really inspiring to see the way that the space community rallied to come together

for this. But not just the space community, the reaction from Congress. And I think this is a really big win and a testament to just the power of space advocacy was the fact that we managed to get both the Senate and the House of Representatives to boldly reject these cuts. How did that go down from your perspective, Jack, being in Washington, D.C. Like, what was it like on the ground during all of that? Well, there was a lot of talk early on in the process, and even, you know, around our day of action in March, when we still had yet, you know, there was a significant leak that happened of some draft documents in the spring that, that again, I think, confirmed what at the time was a rumor, but there was still a lot of, well, don't worry, this is not going to happen. There's no

way that they would propose as significant a cut. And that disbelief, eventually turned into maybe a bit of belief once we saw the real, you know, the writing pen to paper of what the OMB was proposing. And this is a testament to the fact that Congress, that we have over the last 60 years built a brand, NASA has built a brand that is supported by a wide swath of Congress, and that this is something that is so deeply popular among the American people, among the electorate, that when push came to shove and they were trying to push through these cuts and there was all this talk of, you know, we're going to implement the PBR regardless of what Congress says, that Congress responded fully, right, and said, no, you are

not going to do this and pushed back both publicly and behind the scenes. And that was in large part because of the advocacy that people did, right? Congress responds to the messages and the phone calls they get. Maybe when you get a automated reply that is kind of a generic, you know, maybe milk toast response of like, oh, well, I support NASA, but there are so many other issues that my office is working for. Thank you for your note. It can feel like that was the end of the engagement, but know that behind the scenes, members of Congress, hundreds of them signed on to letters and sent messages and were part of this effort to respond to what was an existential crisis for the National Space Program. And that was, in part because of that coalition of

support that has been built up over those 60 years that I mentioned, but also a huge part of it was the fact that you wrote to them and said that this is important to you, a constituent of theirs. And the opportunities that were presented to them, they took full advantage of. As someone who has entered this policy and advocacy world fairly recently, I kind of came from a background of the average person in my understanding of congressional engagement. I was sending letters to Congress calling congressional offices and often getting those messages back saying, thanks for your input, we're considering it. And that was it. And so it was fairly opaque for me coming from that side of things. But now that I've been in D.C. working with congressional

offices, meeting congressional staffers, I'm hearing from these staffers, hey, we've heard from your members. And it's really pushing us to think more critically about this issue. How can we help, you know, make this more at the forefront of the discussion? Well, the reaction from our members and from space fans, not just in the United States, around the world was, it was very inspiring, but also just a huge amount of people got involved in this, right? So much so that we decided to spin off a second day of action, which is not something that we usually do. And it just happened to be through, I mean, great timing and planning on the staff's part, but also kind of by accident happened during a government

shutdown. That was not good planning. That was not. I would have rather had the government open personally. I still blame Jack for this entire successful endeavor. Absolutely. I will take the blame for that one. I was the one who opened my mouth. Maybe we met, what was it like July 23rd or something? And we were like, what if we did another day of action? Yeah. It's my idea. Yep. So we can blame Jack for all of that success. And yeah, and then the government shut down, which just makes things complicated at best. But yeah, I mean, obviously it turned out to be from that kind of idle thought that condemned us all to that amount of work. We resulted in, again, arguably, that's hard to prove this with, because there's no real

records with this, but I'd say arguably the largest single day of advocacy on Capitol Hill for space science in history. I just could not be, you could not find probably a bigger group dedicated to that topic going out through, through Congress. You know, we had this amazing press conference right in front of the Capitol. with a member of Congress there on the Appropriations Committee for Maryland, Glenn Ivy. We had, Bill was showing up on cable TV and national TV.

I was doing interviews. We met with Chuck Schumer. We met with, how many offices did all of our members meet with that day? 254. 54. Just a spectacular outcome. I mean, Jack should go through it because, again, it's his fault that we did this great thing. But it's just a spectacular turnout.

And, again, I think just goes to show that people, cared about this and were really and came on their own dime, on their own dime and on their own time to participate with us. And we didn't do it alone, right? That was the, the, another unique element of this, not only since the first time we've ever done a second day of action in a single year, but we also did it with 19 other space organizations representing academia, the commercial space sector, labor unions, nonprofit organizations. professional societies really representing every facet of the space community, as wide a net as you can cast and consider it the space community we had involved in the day of action.

And that's, I think, what led to a lot of the success, not only in the turnout, which again, was substantial. More than 250 people just rank and file members of these organizations participating, but also on top of that, the high number of principles, high level of people at each of those organizations that participated. But the response we got from Congress, from people seeing just how many organizations and the amount of effort that went into this. And I'll just share an anecdote. You know, we were at the sort of post-event, you know, wind down dinner afterward over by a union station. And as in most venues in D.C., they had a big projector screen out on the patio

showing the local news. And this is the local news. You know, this is like, you know, bread and butter issues that are being covered on screen. And every time we came up on screen, which was we were in the rotation of news stories that were being covered by this station, the whole place erupted in cheers. Because we all knew we were making that, that, that impact and that we really had spread this message of unity and of hope and optimism that I think is intrinsic to space exploration and space science. And it really was this show of commitment to these higher ideals. And, you know, I think it really was a truly phenomenal thing to be a part of. And hopefully we can, we don't need to replicate that level of intense and

organizing that over the course of two months. Hopefully we have a little bit more time before the next one, April 19th and 20th of next year. But, you know, it was truly a spectacular event. This was your first day of action. Is that right, Ari? That's right. My first day of action with the Planetary Society. What was your experience being there? Because I've been there several years now, but this was so many more people than usual. It was a combination of being thrown into the fray or tossed into the fire without having really made my chops yet and also being surrounded by this movement of people who believe in something, which is, you know, the fundamental awesomeness of space and exploration in a way that that energized me that I wasn't expecting. So my my experience

was kind of this mixture of like, what am I doing? I'm a chicken with my head cut off. I have to do all these tasks and help out and I don't really know what I'm doing. And also, this is awesome. This is, this is such a cool thing to be a part of to join this organization and be thrust into one of its most monumental events in history just when I am getting started really made me feel like I was in the right place. It was a really interesting time in your life too, because shortly thereafter, in the middle of this government shut down, one of the space missions that you worked on an instrument for Escapade, you worked on. the visions instrument launched, but in the midst of this government shut down.

So it's been a really interesting year in Ari Coppell's life, I feel. Yeah, in many ways, that was full circle. So I did my PhD work on Mars science largely, a little bit of Earth science mattered in there, but remote sensing and space exploration. And there was this little tiny small project that I got to work on on the side, which was helping build these cameras for some far off mission that, you know, it was kind of nebulous. When was it actually going to launch? We didn't know. And went off and did a couple postdocs, now got involved in advocacy. And suddenly,

this Escapade mission is actually launching of the five Simplex missions, with which Escapade is one of them. Three of them failed. One of them is in permanent storage. So the odds seem to be stacked against the Escapade mission of really having any success. And it seems like it's actually returning data. And so I got to go down to Florida during the shutdown, be a part of the festivities around the launch. And it feels like my training is coming back full circle and helping inform my advocacy at this point, helping promote the expansion of missions like these to Mars and beyond. Well, a true testament to just the passion of the space community and what you guys accomplished with that mission. But also just the fact that so many wonderful things have come out of this level of

love for space this year. While it's very difficult, it's in the hardest times that we find our greatest motivation and our greatest strength and courage together. And I wanted to give the team a little chance to kind of go through some of the numbers that we've achieved this year with the number of letters, the number of people involved. And Casey, you've been making just some amazing, beautiful graphics to try to communicate these things to people throughout the year. I think, too, that this is an interesting point in the strategic change in the way that we've been addressing this. I've been seeing your graphics not only presented by the planetary society, but by science communicators all over the United States in the last year.

Yeah, it was one of those things where when we were sketching out our campaign strategy this year that Jack and I like to say, we threw out whatever ideas we had for what 2025 was going to be when we first learned about these potential cuts. And one of the ideas is it's not enough to provide the data. You have to provide it in a way that people can consume it. and make it easy for people to get it, to view it, to also to plot it themselves, you know, whatever. And we've really leaned into an investment in our data, I guess you can call it,

data science, data pipelines. I suddenly became a software developer again, which is my old career from back in the day. You know, we're still a small team, even with Ari here, we're three people. So we really leaned into a lot of, and I'll emphasize responsible use of AI tools to help, not just coding, but to provide some pretty novel tools for our members, too. And again, these are, a lot of this we, we've open source and discussed, but it's using it as an assistant to increase the velocity of the things that we can basically ship out the door. But one of those was charts and saying, it's not enough to say we think these are bad, right?

These cuts are bad, which we do when people do. But it lands a lot better, and people can respond to it more when you can say, and we've got the numbers to back it up. Why is this bad? And the phrase that we said, these are the largest cuts in NASA's history, we can say that because we ran the numbers and they aren't the largest cuts in history. And so it actually enabled our messaging to become more sharp and memorable because we did the work and we had some of the groundwork there, but because then we were able to share it. And I've been very happy to see my church, you know, Jackals, I mean, they're showing up on CNN today or they were in a house hearing the other week.

and we release them through a Creative Commons license so everyone can just share them without rights issues. And it's just putting that a little bit of work to make it vivid and clear. That's been a huge aspect of this. I think that we've been able to take a term used by our new NASA administrator, a force multiplier. So we put the data out there, make it memorable, package it up, and then others take it and then share it themselves. That's not always us doing it. And that's how a three-person team can really punch above their. weight in terms of getting the word out there.

And I think the other thing, and maybe Jack can speak to this a little bit, we got really good at being fast this year, which is not always the easiest thing in any organization. But we got really good at getting things out quickly so we can help define the narrative before it forms. Well, I mean, you look at the term extinction level event that we, that Casey, you coined very early on in this in this situation and that became the i mean i think still today we're we're getting pings on on social media and and traditional media of people using that phrase because it was so compelling and it was backed up by data and i'll just say to add on to that that helped tell the story with

members of congress because you know your average member of congress probably receives anywhere between 10 and 15,000 messages in a given week. Sometimes that can be in a day, depending on what the topic is. And so they're sorting through a lot of information. And not to say that people shouldn't do that. That's your constitutional right, right? First Amendment guarantees you that right to petition your government

for redress of grievances. But the difference that I think we helped make was in telling that a cohesive story of what this would do, not just to the whole space program, but to individual congressional districts and states and the potential impacts there as well. Jack, let's talk about speed, too, because again, I think that's really important that we could get out there fast. We had a very good working relationship with our leadership at the organization. We knew our issues. We were really confident we had the data to back it up. But I think that we could comment. We could be the ones to say, you know, to respond to media requests, but also you could get out there

to those offices right away with the data, with the message, with the perspective. I think a good example of when we did that budget briefing in June, again, that I, you are also to be blamed for I think with 24 hours before saying, what if we do that? There was, I think, a briefing canceled by NASA for nefarious reasons that the political leadership at the time. And Jack said, what if we do it? And I said, okay. To the point that we had responded so quickly in that case and in multiple others that there were questions as to how we had known to time our events and briefings at that time. And it really was just being nimble that helped create this kind of sense that we were.

and I think we were. We absolutely were on top of the ball, but it really, I think, made such a huge impact, just in the optics of a period of time of such uncertainty, where a lot of the legacy organizations, right, larger, more established groups were not as quick to respond because that's just the nature of organizations, right? That's the nature of building consensus in large multi-member consensus-based organizations. But it gave us a significant advantage then. in that sort of marketplace of messaging that if we could get our message out first and many members of Congress and members of the administration and our partners were the first to hear about something because we had already put together the statement and responded to it. So that that really was, I think, a major change. And kudos where they're due of Danielle Gunn and the whole communications team. And Sarah, you as well, the amount of time we've spent on these calls recording at the last minute to get something added to an episode of Planetary Radio.

It just was this whole of organization effort that, you know, Casey and I and Ari as well, I think can all say that we felt incredibly well supported by the organization, by our board of directors and advisory council as well to make sure that we could be the first or at least one of the first organizations to respond as things developed and to acknowledge when good things were happening. Right. It's very easy when you're in this kind of space to just focus on when bad things are happening and respond to those. And sometimes you miss the good things that happen. But when the Senate proposed, you know, their budget bill basically rejecting all of the cuts and keeping NASA and the National Science Foundation fully funded, you know, kudos were there due. And when the administration, too, I mean, when they reverse decisions to fire probationary employees at NASA, right?

in large part because of the pushback that they got from the general public and from Congress, you have to acknowledge when good things happen as a result of your advocacy. And so I think that speed and ability for us to muster the operational ability to put statements and advocacy opportunities out there as quickly as we did. That definitely goes in the plus column as we look to, to 26. Another number I just was thinking of this that Amber or social media colleague gave us was more than 9 million, which is the number of views of our advocacy videos, you know, reels, just our reels on Instagram in this last year. So getting the word out through these social channels has been huge and really just wildly effective. And I think demonstrates that there is an interest in thirst for this type of information and context that a lot of our visuals are shared that way, but just that message.

So just did, we did this full court press just in types of media, too. Print, you know, media. Jack and I gave over 200 interviews to the press this year. I think we had at least 1,500 news stories written about us. It adds up all of the potential readership of those and it came to 46 billion. So I think there's some double counting there in a few places. But a lot of people saw these stories. We had a New York Times op-ed piece that we were.

We published this year, which was really fantastic. We took over StarTalk Radio, me and Bill. It did a number of other podcast appearances. We just had a really, really leaned into that outreach aspect. And we had a lot of new people, too, I think, in terms of beyond our members, a lot of new people learned about it. And I have a lot of really wonderful emails from people who said, I saw you on the Start Talk. And I became a member. I saw you, I saw your article in New York Times.

and like this is such great work and just that's what we needed to do and we did it and it's really about keeping this up going forward but it was just you know we really did really did do a good job as sorry do people just like hearing us congratulate ourselves it's not just that it's I mean I think this is why we're excited about it and I think we want to just make sure that particularly our members who who support this financially you got your money's worth this year from this program. We really, I think we really did, as a Jack said, you had, we left it all out on the field this year and we did an extraordinary job. And I'm really excited about how we build this into the next year. And while we're talking about metrics, right, and the difference between this year and past years, it was a tenfold increase on the amount of activities, advocacy actions that people took online. You know, 84,000, more than 84,000 messages. were sent through our advocacy portal by, I think, a combined 32,000 people. Just our advocacy.

And that's just our advocacy, right? And that's just people that wrote a letter, made a phone call, signed a petition. We had that global petition, you know, that was a very, I think, unique vehicle to show. And part of the reason for that was we wanted to show that this was a global endeavor. That space is something. And NASA is seen globally as this leader in space science. the world looks to NASA for that leadership. People from more than 100 countries sign on to that.

You know, it's a handful here and there in some countries. Some countries it was a couple hundred. That petition really showed to Congress and the administration just how impactful NASA is on the global stage. And all of those people together, you know, created this tapestry, right? This community of advocates that, hopefully, hopefully we can continue to engage. And if you're listening to the show for the first time and want to get more involved, you know, planetary.org slash save NASA science is the current action hub that we have set up. We're going to keep that running and have updates and

opportunities as we go into next year. You know, we're sitting here congratulating each other on a very, a banner year for advocacy as it was. But the story is not yet over. And we still have to finalize fiscal year 26. And we have to start looking to fiscal year 27. administrator, Isaacman's coming in to be sworn in imminently, if not already by the time this episode airs. So this is something we're going to have to continue to build on. And I think what we have, as we've described, is an infrastructure that did not exist at the beginning of this year. We did not have an office. We did not have a science and technology policy fellow. We did not have, you know, a lot of these tools, the data analysis and visualization tools that Casey helped create.

or created, not helped create, created from scratch in a lot of cases. And this is to build a new advocacy program that can respond adequately and immediately when needed. And so I just want to say thank you to everyone who helped make this year such a monumental success. We'll be right back with the rest of our look at space policy and advocacy in 2025 after this short break. Greetings. Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society. We are a community of people dedicated to the scientific exploration of space or explorers dedicated to making the future better for all humankind. Now, as the world's largest independent space organization, we are rallying public support for space exploration, making sure that there is real funding, especially for NASA science. And we've had some success during this challenging year. But along with advocacy, we have our step initiative and our neo-shoemaker grants. So please support us. We want to finish 2025 strong and keep that momentum going into 2026.

So check us out at planetary.org slash planetary fund today. Thank you. Yeah, it's been a lot. And seeing the way that people have responded, seeing how far we've come has been very inspiring. But there's still a lot left to do. And you've alluded to this a few times the now official, almost confirmation of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator. As we're recording this, that literally only just happened yesterday. We've been sitting around waiting to see how this plays out.

And again, that's another. Actually, as we've been recording this right now, he has now confirmed. Oh, my gosh. He did this wearing it. I just saw the picture. Amazing. I mean, that moved really quickly. Wow.

Yeah. He's ready to go. But, I mean, good. because this is the first time that we've ever had a NASA administrator nominated, then had that nomination pulled, then re-nominated. Nothing about this is usual. And so many of the NASA institutions that we love are left in this interesting limbo as they've been waiting for this confirmation to happen.

So between the fact that we now have a NASA administrator and where we're still sitting with what's going on with Congress, what are the next steps for our team, but also just for all the space advocates out there? So we've been tracking the congressional process very closely. As folks know, the government reopened in mid-November after a month and a half long shut down. And that was a result of having passed what's called the continuing resolution. And it was a short-term continuing resolution. So it really doesn't specify new funding lines.

It doesn't generate new programs. It basically says keep things status quo just so we can reopen. open the government until the end of January. So our new deadline is January 30th, by which point Congress needs to either pass the appropriation bills that were not passed. Three of the 12 were passed in November with that continuing resolution. And so it needs to pass nine appropriation bills by the end of January or another continuing resolution or the government will shut down again. Now, we've been tracking that the Senate is putting together a potential minibus, which is a combination of appropriations bills, and that includes NASA. And the numbers we're

seeing in there, actually, just to applaud ourselves again, include both the numbers that are in the Senate bills, which would actually be an slight increase in funding for NASA, and the language that we saw in the House bill, which said, let's fund the programs at NASA at no less than the values in the programmatic tables. And that basically is a safeguard against any sort of redaction and funding later on. And we're expecting that process to play out in the new year. It potentially could come down to the wire again. So we're going to be gritting our teeth in the new year and watching and continuing to advocate for the House and Senate to come to an agreement that's suitable for NASA funding.

So what's next for our advocates? What can we look forward to doing during the next few months? Well, I think Jack already mentioned this, but we'll emphasize we already have the Day of Action 2026. So if you weren't able to come to D.C. with us in 2025, you can come with us in 2026, April 19th and 20th, registration is open now and it's discounted for the next month or so, so you can save up to 35% registration. That's obviously one of the most impactful things you can do. The other things, the kind of the bigger picture things that Jack and I want to do this upcoming year is really about solidifying a lot of the foundations.

So, you know, this year we kind of heard that we were laying a lot of infrastructure while we were reacting and building and using it. And now we need to kind of go back and solidify that infrastructure. We need to simplify kind of our processes and get those in order so we can actually start putting all of our work into the outward aspect instead of just building up the inward aspect. Thankfully, the organization, and again, because of our super generous members, we've had a lot of new resources.

We're able to have now a new office in Washington, D.C., strategically located. It really enables us to do a lot. more with our partners and enables us to host people and to host events and to do a lot of just to be there in D.C. really effectively. We want to leverage and continue to build on our tools that we've been building to leverage responsible use of AI as this force multiplier and to really lean into our role here as a trusted source of insight and of analysis, but also continue to speak clearly, vocally, and with passion about what we believe in. And I kind of keep going back to this. That's because of our independence, we've been able to do that. When we spoke out against these cuts, we didn't have any government contracts that were at risk. We were able to say what we believed in and say it quickly because we had that freedom because of our independence.

That is a really unique position. So I really want to continue to grow. Ideally, I think we'd all like to not work as many weekends and early mornings and late nights as we did this last year. year. I think Jack's calendar, I looked, I did some analysis. I think Jack had something like 1,600 meetings last year. My meetings went up by 25% this year compared to the year before. We could face the same situation again in February or March when the 27 budget request comes out. So we really want to have a lot of these things in place so we can continue this groundwork that we've laid. Ari is a great addition to have this year because he's here

from the beginning now as opposed to coming in late. And so, you know, having that extra person, you know, the, the aspect of being in D.C. And doing meetings, you can only be in one meeting at once. And so having more than one person, you multiply that communicating clearly also to the scientific community to our members and keeping this momentum up for them and doing a better job at keeping them in the loop and part of this whole process as it goes up and down and in and out of awareness kind of more broadly to make them, you know, see where are where we are in this year-long effort and to show that advocacy when we ask for it is part of a

strategic effort. So lots of big ideas, lots of more things to come, but I think we're in a real, we've got the wind at our backs, and we've got a lot of things aligned. And our members and supporters should be really excited about what's coming. I just want to point out this issue is not going to go away. There are always going to be folks out there who want to slash budgets, folks who don't care as adamantly about space science, there's always going to be changes going on within both the government but also in the space sector that potentially put at risk the type of exploration and basic research and science that we have all come to find so fulfilling in our lives. We're seeing dramatic changes within the commercial space sector and people

don't really have a great understanding of what that means for science. For example, we were just talking about me having gone down to Florida to watch the launch of the Escapade spacecraft. It launched on board Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket, and New Glenn successfully was able to recover its rocket, making Blue Origin the only company next to SpaceX that's able to reuse rockets. And this is changing the game. Now there's two competitors who are able to drive. down the costs of launching relatively large spacecraft into orbit and potentially people at some point. And it's going to change the game for spaceflight. We're going to see more and more. We're already seeing more and more flights going out. What did I see SpaceX has already

cleared the hundredth flight of the year? And we're going to have to navigate this new world that we're entering for how does science fit in to this expanding space industry? How does exploration fit into this expanding space industry? And the planetary society is the organization that I believe is best suited to help answer that question. You're absolutely right. Those things, we can't take those for granted that science and exploration are the core of what NASA does. And yeah, if anything, we've seen a year of tremendous change and uncertainty, you need stuff to put on top of those rockets. And right now there is a dearth of missions and instruments being developed at the agency that were, I don't think there's really,

I mean, I think maybe Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope might be the only NASA science mission scheduled to launch next year. And that, it might be at the end of next year, right, depending on how its final testing goes. And so, you know, if you took part in our advocacy this year, thank you. Get ready to do it again next year. Hopefully not as at such a breakneck speed, but know that we're going to be responding to these circumstances as they develop. If you're new to advocacy and you want to get involved, let us be your guide. Let us be the people that involve you in this process. Because democracy is not a spectator sport. Decisions are made by those that show up. And that's what the planetary society was built to do, is respond to

moments like this and to look forward into the future to expand, expand those horizons so that we may know ourselves and our place within the cosmos. I hope that after all of this effort that you guys get a chance to chill out as we go into the holiday season, but quite frankly, I mean, this year has really crystallized for me why we do what we do. I've always been very passionate about space exploration and about communicating about space exploration. But I didn't go and get my degree in astrophysics because I thought I was going to be working in space policy. And yet here we all are, right? And it's us rising to the unique circumstances of our time. And watching the way that we've all come together as community across the United States, across the world to support

something that we care so deeply about has been deeply motivating to me. And I think worth all the nights that we stayed up a little bit too late doing the work. Thank you so much for everything that you guys have done. Thank you so much to all of the advocates out there that have helped in this effort. I can't say that we definitively saved NASA, but from where I'm sitting right now, after where we were earlier this year, it really does feel like we accomplished something great that we were uniquely positioned to do and that could change the future of the way that we explore space together.

So it feels like a really banner year. And I'm so happy to be here to celebrate it with you all. Thank you, Sarah. We're always happy to talk about space policy and, yeah, hopefully you get a break as well in these next few weeks. It truly is an honor. It's a pleasure. It's a privilege to be able to work with such an amazing team, including you and Ari and Casey and Bill and Jen and just everybody back in Pasadena and around the globe and all of our members. Yeah, thank you so much, Sarah. You are the enabler of getting our voice. out there to the public and to the membership. And without being able to communicate, there's kind of this barrier between what's going on in D.C.

and the values of the membership. So you really enable that conversation. Thanks for saying that. It is one of the truest privileges of my life. To be able to share these stories and all the stories of the amazing things going on in space exploration around the world, I could not have dreamed that this would be my job. And at the end of such a difficult year,

it is just such a joy to be citizen. here with all of you reflecting on these moments and what we've done together. But here's to the end of 2025 and to hopefully a brighter 2026. Hear here. Here here. At aster, Sarah. This year has made one thing especially clear. Space science is both remarkably fragile and deeply resilient. Fragile because it relies on long timelines. It takes sustained support and people who can devote years, sometimes entire careers to missions that may not bear fruit for decades, but also resilient because even in moments of uncertainty, the drive to explore and understand

doesn't disappear. This is a lesson that scientists and science advocates have been learning for centuries. With that in mind, I wanted to zoom out a little bit from this year's policy fights and ask a broader question. Why does uncertainty and funding for NASA Matter so much for the future of space science. For that, it's time for what's up with our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betz. Hey, Bruce. Hey, Sarah. Happy almost 2026. Happy almost 2026 to you as well, and happy go away 2025. I mean, really, though, I feel like that was not the official theme of that conversation with Jack Casey and Ari, but it's been such a really difficult year for every and space exploration.

And it's not to say that a lot of wonderful things didn't happen, but I am looking forward to a brighter 2026. Hopefully, fingers crossed. I hope you're right. A lot of science suffered and a lot of people suffered as a result. So what happened in 2026 and a lot of things, but certainly with NASA and space science and cuts and firings and downsizing. and it was a mess.

Yeah, and we touched on some of the effects, you know, the number of people that we've lost from NASA and just the uncertainty and funding for a lot of these missions. But I think it's really important to like reiterate the fact that this isn't something that just causes short-term harm, right? When we have this level of uncertainty with NASA and we lose all these people, there are some really long-term detrimental things that happen for space science. So I wanted to take a moment just to kind of acknowledge, like even though we've managed to get both the House and the Senate on our side, even submissions we've managed to bring back from the brink like Osiris Apex, but there's still a lot of damage that can't really be undone from what happened this year. Yeah. I mean, when you lose people, you lose expertise. And when people are forced to seek other fields, whether it be new people trying to come into the field or people with enormous amounts of expertise here, the people lost and the people.

is one of the biggest problems. And then planetary exploration is something marked by multi-year, multi-decade development and flying and missions. And so you're always, even on a normal cycle, with different presidents, different congresses, you're having trouble keeping things funded over time and keeping everyone's eye on the ball. And it's even worse at this point.

And then there's just a psychological blow and losing momentum. And then there are our poor international partners, our in this case being NASA, the trust suffers, to say the least. And that's something that's happened over time, various missions that we backed out of or they've backed out of, usually us. And also, you end up with data gaps for given places that we were going to regularly are monitoring than we don't see for a while.

And then with the long-term mission, look, if you're not, you're having trouble funding the existing missions, getting long-term missions into the queue, that not doing that will leave you with big gaps in exploration, and that also will tie back to losing people from the field. So tell me something hopeful. Well, I did talk about this with Jack and Casey and Ari a little bit, but I think despite the fact that it was a really dark year, because it was such a difficult time. It gave people an opportunity to rise to the moment, right? And man, did people rise to the moment? Not just people in the United States, but people all around the world. We had over 100 countries represented in our international petition, tens of thousands of people

riding into Congress and calling them and going to our day of action. So I think really crystallized for me is the fact that even when there isn't a lot of obvious political will to fund space science, the entire space community just absolutely perseveres and rallies together in these moments. And because of that, we managed to turn the tide in some really meaningful ways. And we're still kind of stuck in limbo right now because of continuing resolution and who knows what's going to happen with the 2027 budget. There's like all this nebulous uncertainty left over. But what is very true to me at this point and interesting, because this is my fifth year at the

planetary society and the most dire year. for space exploration and the time that I've been working in the fields, is that we have people all around the world, tens of thousands of people ready to ride for NASA and for space science. And that makes me feel not alone. And also makes me feel really connected to all the people throughout history that have lived through these moments, either through budget cuts for space science in the modern era,

or just the denial of very basic scientific principles in the past, right? Like this ties us to a legacy of people that have been striving for this amount of space science and this amount of like breaking down of the understanding of the world around us. So a dark year, but man, I don't feel alone as much as I used to, my passion for space. I feel like this really proved to me that we've got just so many people around the world on our side. That was extremely well said, and I am feeling much better now.

Aw. No, we did a great job. You did a great job. of our policy team, but also all those members and supporters and people who got involved with us and with others to support space science and as it was being attacked is the flip side of there being the dark in the world. There's also the light. And there was an awful lot of people responded and got together and, well, you said it better

than I will. So I'll leave it at that. Thank you, everyone. It really was demonstrated a great awesomeness within what otherwise would have been a very dark year. There's a lot of hope and there's a lot of great people and you're not alone, Sarah. I think I'm alone, but that's just because of my personality. Well, you'll always have me as a friend, Bruce. Aw, that makes me feel different somehow.

No, that's wonderful. Thank you. I will rely on it. Did I ever tell you the story of a family with a young man and his friends? They must have all been 10 or 11, 12 years old, started a lemonade stand to save up money to help our NASA science fund. Like, it's just been such an interesting year between like the small scale things that individuals have done and all the people that risked their jobs to go protests in front of NASA. Like, I don't know. It's been weird being kind of at the center of the space resistance, but also. So very hopeful. So here's hoping that next year is a better year in funding for space science.

But even if it isn't, we're just going to keep fighting and the planetary society is going to keep going. This has been our 45th anniversary year. And as far as I'm concerned, we need another 45 years of standing on the mountaintops and shouting about space exploration. As long as we're all here together, there's no way it'll ever die. Well, this feels a little anticlimactic, but I'm going to go ahead and do a real. The sun, you know, space fact, rewime. The sun, you know, here's something that'll help you be less dark. And your dark moments, remember, the sun is about 440,000 times brighter than the full moon.

And the full moon is about 30,000 times brighter than the brightest star in the sky. We live in a world blessed with the brightness of light. light. A mode of dust suspended in the sunbeam. Oh, it's beautiful. Just don't stare at it. You can stare at the modes of dust. Don't stare at the sun. Don't stare at the sun, especially as we go into the next solar eclipse. Use proper sun protection during the totality. You can look at the sun, but you must put the protection back on. Well, we'll go over that more if you need to. And yeah, the solar eclipse, it's going to be one you're going to have to travel to probably this year, I believe. Oh, definitely. We'll talk a little bit about that next week. But, yeah, Thanks for shedding a little more light in a dark place.

All right, everybody, go out there, look on the night sky and think about the positivity expressed by Sarah and how it inspires all of us and will inspire our 2026 to moments of greatness and fabulous time and goody, goody, wow, wow, wow. Thank you and good night. We've reached the end of this week's. episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week to look back at all of the amazing things that the space science community has learned and achieved in 2025. If you love this show, you can get Planetary Radio t-shirts at planetary.org slash shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty, and joy of space science and exploration by leaving our view or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback

not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through planetary radio. And every new space advocate that we inspire is one other person that can help us in the fight to save NASA science and support space exploration all around the world. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email. Planetary Radio at planetary.org. Or if you're a planetary society member, leave a comment in the planetary radio space in our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced. by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and has made possible by our members,

each of whom has been pivotal in such a difficult year for space science. You can join us and help support space science and exploration in the United States and around the world at planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverta and Ray Paletta are our associate producers. Casey Dreyer is the host of our monthly space policy edition,

and Matt Kaplan hosts our monthly book club edition. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. My name is Sarah Al-Ahmad, the host and producer of Planetary Radio. And until next week, Ad Astra.