Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The dark age of NASA science? Analyzing the FY 2026 budget proposal

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

The White House has released its Fiscal Year 2026 congressional budget justification for NASA, and the implications are staggering. If enacted, this proposal would slash NASA’s science program funding by nearly half, cancel dozens of active and upcoming missions, and reduce the agency’s workforce by one-third. Sarah Al-Ahmed is joined by Jack Kiraly, The Planetary Society’s director of government relations, to examine what’s in the nearly 500-page document, what it means for the future of space science and exploration, and how advocates can still act to save NASA science. Then, in What’s Up, Planetary Society Chief Scientist Bruce Betts shares insights on China’s newly launched asteroid sample return mission, Tianwen-2. The spacecraft will rendezvous with near-Earth asteroid 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, offering new scientific opportunities amidst a moment of global uncertainty in space exploration. Discover more at: https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2025-FY-2026-budget-proposalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A staggering new budget proposal threatens to cancel dozens of NASA science missions and shrink the agency to its smallest size since the dawn of the space age, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah El Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. We've been bracing for this moment. The White House's full Congressional budget justification for NASA is here, and its implications could reshape the future of space exploration. Today I'm joined by Jack Corelli, our Director of Government Relations at the Planetary Society. We'll break down the White House's fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA.

We discuss what it means for the future of space exploration and how this proposal, if enacted, could mark an extinction level event for NASA science. Then we'll take a moment to shift our gaze outwards with Bruce Betts, our chief scientist, as he joins for What's Up and a discussion of Tianwen-2, China's ambitious new asteroid sampling mission. If you love planetary radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, 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.

Last Friday, May 30, 2025, the White House released its full FY 2026 Congressional Budget Justification for NASA. While this is only a proposal, not yet law, its implications are deeply troubling. If enacted, this budget would cut funding for NASA's science programs by 47%. It proposes eliminating or defunding dozens of missions, many of them active, successful, and beloved, while dramatically shrinking the agency's workforce and ending key STEM outreach programs.

We've been covering this developing story for months, warning that cuts were coming. Now we have the details, We've been covering this developing story for months, warning that cuts were coming. Now we have the details. And the truth is even more devastating than expected. To help us break it all down, I'm joined by Jack Corelli, the Planetary Society's Director of Government Relations. Jack and our space policy team have spent the past several days deep in the nearly 500-page

budget document, analyzing what's at stake, not just for space science, but for American space leadership education and innovation. The Planetary Society is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit organization that exists to advance space science and exploration. That independence gives us the freedom and the responsibility to speak honestly about what this budget means and why it matters. In this conversation, we walk through the sweeping changes outlined in the budget request, what's at stake for NASA science programs, how this affects the broader international space community, and what you can do to help protect the future of space exploration, no matter where you

live. Hey, Jack. Hey, Sarah. We've been spending weeks, or I guess it's months at this point, looking forward to the day that NASA's budget is going to drop because we had all these dire warnings that it was going to be bad. And I tell you, this is bad. Yeah, well, I mean, this weekend, wow,

what a curve ball we've been thrown. And I mean, I'm not even just talking about the budget. I'm talking about the ousting of Jared Isaacman from the president's team. This is been a huge, huge moment for the space community. And you're right. We've been talking about this for months. I remember the first conversation you and I had back in February, talking about potential cuts to NASA. I think we were all expecting there to be cuts.

We started to get those little trinkets, those little bits of information about what it might look like. And it was like 50% cut. What are you talking about? We got the number. Oh, we refined it 47%, basically 50%. And then now we can go through

and see what the budget looks like from top to bottom. What we got earlier this month, the President's skinny budget, was only the hors d'oeuvres, the amuse-bouche, if you will, of the sort of absolute dismantling of the space agency that is provided in this budget. Everything about it is pretty bad. There's nuggets of good information, but very few and very far between. Well, it's interesting because, you know, getting into this document and we'll be honest,

this is like a 470 some odd page document. It's large, so I haven't personally read the entire thing, although you and Casey have been at it for days going page by page through this thing. But as you get right into the beginning of this document, there's a section written by the acting NASA administrator, Janet Petro, and it's a message that starts off by saying that this is a document. Essentially she frames this as the golden age of exploration while simultaneously announcing these major cuts to NASA. What do you make of this contrast between the tone and the intent of this document?

Well, it's entirely messaging, right? At the end of the day, this is a political document. Anyone that says that NASA is devoid of politics, doesn't know what they're talking about. This is a political document. This is the stance of the administration. They understand how important space is to the American story, to humanity's story, right? It's not just the US. They understand what space and NASA means to people. They understand that the public has this very high expectation of what NASA should accomplish.

It's notable that you grab anybody off the street, they're gonna think that NASA's budget is an order or two magnitudes more than what it actually is because of that profound impact that it has, not just on science and engineering, which of course it has left an indelible mark on how we even approach any of that, but the cultural significance of NASA is immense.

And so of course they're going to write their budget as every administration does, as if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread. They're going to write it as, oh, it's going to accomplish these things that we have such high expectations for. But what this budget actually is, when you actually read the document and you read through the numbers and you piece that story together, this is a budget of retreat, of retrenchment, of ignoring the decades of work leading up to this moment that we are currently in, that has already been an amazing era of

scientific exploration of the cosmos, and turns away from that and says, all of that was not worth it. And says, going forward, we are going to narrow our focus. We are going to close our eyes to these big questions of where did we come from and are we alone? And it's going to focus exclusively on, on this very narrow band of activities while also undercutting those very activities themselves. So it's, it's not only that we're, we're getting more focused on a particular set of programs,

which I would understand, right? I mean, this is a administration that across the board has expressed concern about the size and scope of government. And that's a policy question, right? That's a fair debate to be having. But what this budget is, is anything but strategic. It is not just that narrowing of ambition. It is also an undercutting of the space industrial base, right? All the folks in the commercial space sector are rightfully worried right now.

And I'm not just talking old space, right? Your big defense primes, your Lockheed Martins and Bowings, I'm talking about your new entities, the folks represented by organizations like the Commercial Space Federation are worried about this budget. It does not do what it says that it does. It's all messaging, it's all spin.

Yeah, I was trying to figure out kind of the broader political philosophy behind this budget, whether it's just austerity or privatization or something else. But as I was trying to piece it together, I was thinking along the same vein here, like it clearly wants to funnel more money into human exploration specifically and into commercial entities, but at the same time it's retracting some of the very bedrock things that we need to accomplish that. Right. I mean, it would be one thing if it was a shift in strategy or policy to say, we're going to focus much more on the lunar program.

Well, it cancels every Artemis mission after Artemis 3, theoretically the return to the lunar program. Well, it cancels every Artemis mission after Artemis 3, theoretically, the return to the lunar surface, right? And has this very vague mention of, oh, and then we'll just buy flights on commercial providers that simply do not exist, right? I mean, you have two contractors right now, Blue Origin and SpaceX, that have won contracts to provide a crew rated lunar lander under what's called the Human Landing Systems contract, HLS. Neither of them have demonstrated the capability, right? I mean, obviously with Starship, this is notionally HLS, though the configuration that they're currently using for Starship is not compliant with what they need for HLS, though the configuration that they're currently using for Starship is not compliant

with what they need for HLS. And I think really it's more foundational work that SpaceX is doing to get the rocket to work and to work consistently. So there is not like this hidden industry of capabilities that we can just go and say, Oh, man, like, I want to go to the moon. Next year. Let me go contract this person that's just sitting there waiting in the wings. This is a capability that we had 60 years ago, 50 years ago, that we lost, and have had to attempt to rebuild. And that's just the moon program. It is not even just focusing on that. And it's

not even particularly focused on on Mars either. And that's just the moon. It is not even just focusing on that. And it's not even particularly focused on on Mars either. And so it's it's completely misaligned, even with its intended purpose of narrowing the scope of government and focusing on key missions. It undercuts all of those ambitions because NASA has over time built up a pretty robust strategy of you have, you know, your robotic, I won't even just call them precursor missions, because they're also supporting missions. I mean, you look at things like Maven, and Mars Odyssey, which get zeroed out in this budget, but our integral parts of the communications infrastructure

that we have on Mars currently, that I don't know if I were going to Mars, I think I would want to be able to phone home, right? Kind of necessary. Kind of necessary. And not only that, but like you look at things like Maven, for example. I am a human, right?

I'm a fleshy, soft bag of water. I, like most other fleshy soft bags of water, do not like getting irradiated. I think that's a pretty universal stance, right? I want to know if we're going to send humans what the radiation environment is like. MAVEN is our only mission doing that at Mars. There is no magnet that at Mars. There is no magnetosphere at Mars. And so if you're going to build up the capabilities of landing on Mars, great.

But you also need the infrastructure that's there. And NASA, through the Decadal Survey process for the Science Mission Directorate and through a concerted effort of working with industry and academic stakeholders, have built up a workforce terrestrially here on Earth, as well as communications and logistics infrastructure that is laying that very bottom foundation layer at the Moon and Mars. And we need more. And this budget does not give that. SONIA DARA-MURTZ You did mention this earlier, too. We're about to get into all the details of everything that this budget cuts.

But in the midst of all of this, we also learned that Jared Isaacman's nomination to lead NASA as administrator was also withdrawn. And given his close ties to SpaceX and the reporting of the departure of Elon Musk from the Department of Government Efficiency, I'm trying to figure out how to interpret the timing and the messaging behind all these decisions or was it just a wild happenstance that all this just happened to happen at once? What we can go off of is very limited information in this realm. I will say it is surprising that from the public reporting that's available,

that the thing that seems to have sunk Isaacman's or I guess President Trump's confidence in Isaacman to lead the agency was the fact that Jared Isaacman had donated a substantial amount of money over the past, however many years, to Democratic candidates for office as a private citizen. This had come up before. It actually was a huge point of, we'll say, consternation among the more faithful elements of the Republican Party, close to the president, months and months ago. And actually, for a lot of folks, I think was maybe a sigh of relief that this would not be an area that was going to be overly politicized or drawn into some partisan

divide, which we're, I think, facing a pretty substantial partisan divide here in Washington. So this had come up before. It was no secret. This is all public information available through the Federal Elections Commission's website that Jared had donated this money. So I find it interesting that that had come up before had been resolved. The president stood by his nominee to lead NASA. And then just as the budget drops, just as Elon leaves this sort of special advisory role that he had in the administration, that Jared's nomination gets pulled. Timing is not always coincidence in politics.

We could certainly read a lot into it, but I think from what we do know, the administration is very much looking to find people that align with their stated priorities. And because there is no national space council and there has been very little in terms of stated space policy objectives of the current iteration of the Trump administration,

this budget is all we have to go on. And not only, I think the previous contributions of Mr. Isaacman, but also his stated ambition to keep NASA's budget flat in the confirmation hearing in early April, the alignment on maintaining the Artemis campaign as the, I think he called it the fastest way to get humans back on the lunar surface surface and his unabashed support for the science mission directorate. Now to have the only stated policy position of the administration be against all of those things, I think there just really was this misalignment. And unfortunately, Mr. Isaacman was axed. And now we no longer have a nominee to lead the agency.

There are nominees for other positions within NASA, notably Greg Autry for the chief financial officer and Matt Anderson of the Space Force Association to be deputy administrator. But both of those people are also at the mercy of the administration's team. And so I know a lot of people are questioning whether those folks, and I know Mr. Anderson in particular

has a close connection with Jared, whether that's gonna maintain course or is there gonna be another shift in policy? And one thing we can say for certain is that there will be more shifts in policy in the coming years. And so it's all remained to be seen. It's a real shame to have such a vacuum in leadership when NASA is facing these massive

changes. But let's just get into it starting with the impacts on science missions. By our organization's reckoning, there are 41 NASA science projects that are targeted for cancellation. What are some of the biggest examples that we can point to to show people just how drastic these cuts are? Yeah, so MAVEN was one that I mentioned, and Mars Odyssey, two orbiters that have been at Mars

in orbit for I think more than a decade in both cases. I think MAVEN's the most recent of the two. But in addition to that... Love Odyssey. I mean, come on. I know. the two. But in addition to that- Love Odyssey. I mean, come on, the entire 2001 of Mars Odyssey, that was so cute. Isn't it like the longest operating planetary orbiter so far?

I mean, my gosh. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case. NASA builds things to last, right? That's, I think, one of the key stories that we've been telling over time. I mean, the Voyagers are still out there, right? I mean, NASA builds things to continue operating and operating and operating,

providing value to the taxpayer. Hey, that's me, right? And you, Zara, like providing value back to the taxpayer at fractions of a penny, right? We spend less than 0.4% of the federal budget on space, on NASA in particular. And of that, less than a third of it goes to NASA science. And then how many layers down you need to go before you get to your individual program lines.

It's per person such a minuscule amount of money to get the views that we get to enable the science, the world-leading science. And we don't have to build that thing every year, right? You build it once and then you have an orbiter there. Now, other missions, right? 41, which is truly astounding, right? We knew that with a 50%, 47% cut, it was going to be a lot. So another one that I'm particularly vexed by, I think, is Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter for going on a decade now. And just gone, right? Our only currently only operating spacecraft in the Jovian system, gone. OSIRIS APEX, which is for those long time listeners is just the new name for Osiris Rex.

Once Osiris Rex had finished its prime mission of caching and returning the samples from the asteroid Bennu, it got a new name Apex Apophis Explorer, because we have this opportunity in 2029, April 13th. It's a Friday, by the way. 2029, when a massive, what would be a civilization-ending asteroid comes between the Earth and our geostationary satellites. So we have this prime opportunity and space agencies around the globe are already bending metal in order to meet that moment, to study this object, to better understand its characteristics,

to better understand its orbit, so that we can prepare in the eventuality that we have to do another deflection test, right? Or maybe it's not a test, maybe it's just a full-on deflection sometime in the future. Oh, Cyrus Apex, it's on orbit. It is on its way. Everything's it's just station keeping right now. Gone. You got New Horizons out past Pluto out in the Kuiper belt.

We're coming up on its 10th anniversary of the Pluto flyby just in a month. Yep. Revolutionized our understanding of the Pluto system. We at the Planetary Society fought for that thing two decades ago, back after it was PK, a Pluto Kuiper explorer. There's a great book by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon talking about the creation of that mission, chasing new horizons. And just to see all that work just out the window, currently doing sort of half-ime planetary science, halftime heliophysics. Because when you're that far out, there's some really interesting stuff you can do.

Let's see. A ton of astronomy missions, the Chandra X-ray Observatory is gone. The Fermi telescope is gone. You know it's bad when I have a spreadsheet of all of these missions. Viper, which I know a lot of folks care about, it's straight up a robotic precursor, right? I know it was talking earlier, there's like the infrastructure stuff.

This is like straight up, it is going to the lunar surface to look for water, thing is built. It is sitting in a clean room. It aced all of its environmental testing and was put on pause middle of last year due to some uncertainty about the astrobotic lander that was going to bring it to the surface.

Now it's just fully canceled. Veritas. Just half a billion dollars just thrown down the drain. Right. Well, half a billion dollars plus the commercial lunar payload services contract, right, which now is, I think, notionally, just going to send a mass simulator. Our contribution to the Rosalind Franklin Rover, which is Europe's first Mars Rover, we're set to provide a number of instruments as well as the entry, descent and landing system for that to help one Europe, which after the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke

ties with the Russian Federation, with Roscosmos to deliver that payload to the Martian surface. And ESA and the US just signed an agreement last year. InVision, which is a Venus mission, Veritas, DaVinci, which are- All the Venus missions. All the Venus missions, as well as the Venus technology program line. There's a, well, it's probably a sub, sub, sub program line, basically program funding to do technology work for potential future missions to develop the capabilities

to operate for longer durations on the surface, which as Venus is the most Earth-like planet in the solar system, it'd be great if we were to study that more, but looks like we're gonna be waiting a while if this budget is passed as is. The Geospace Dynamics Constellation, which is the flagship for the Heliophysics Division, help us understand the Helio environment, right?

The interaction between the Sun and the Earth. Which we kind of need to know right now at solar maximum. Right. I mean, this is like such a... There's actually a lot of things in here that pertain to heliophysics and even like, you know, some parts of astronomy that deal with that kind of stuff that is just absolutely obliterated in this budget. And then I know I think another thing that's been on people's minds is Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, which I've seen it, I've seen it in the clean room. It is almost done. They are screwing on the last bits and pieces of hardware.

And it was rumored to be outright canceled during what's the pass back phase when that leak came out. It is not canceled. I'll say that, but it is funded at less than 50% of what the budget projection was in previous years for fiscal year 2026. And so with kind of this vague, well, we're going to see if we can find some efficiencies within this, I think it's 150 something million dollars. They needed close to 400 million in fiscal year 2026 to finish out the development of that project.

And so we're gonna spend money on this thing with the idea that we're gonna somehow find a lot of overhead and efficiencies that can make it cheaper to finish this thing. It's not like we haven't built a space telescope before. And this one's on budget and on schedule. And yet we're still tinkering with the budget. It just doesn't seem right.

No. Oh, and the big one that we haven't even touched on yet, Mars sample return. We've been fighting for that program for ages. So I did some research. Do you know when the first technical feasibility study was done for Mars sample return? No.

1970. Oh, ouch. We were landing on the moon and folks over at NASA thought, let's start thinking about Mars. What are we gonna do after Apollo? What is this program gonna look like? Well, we need to land on Mars, right? After that, what do we wanna do? Well, we wanna send Mars, right? After that, what do we want to do?

Well, we want to send humans. Well, before that, what do we need to do? We need to do sample return. We've been talking about this. This has been that like the penultimate goal to human exploration on Mars has always been Mars sample return. For whatever reason,

Mars sample return is just outright canceled. And so clearly, what I'm, I think the thread that I'm pulling on here is that this isn't like a human space flight focus versus science focus. This isn't a, you know, red state versus blue state thing even. This is just a wholesale, just there's no strategy. There's nothing underpinning this budget. This is, and we call it out in our statement, this is just the personal ambitions of a couple people at OMB. Really one guy, Russ Vogt, who years ago, even before being part of this current administration, laid out a plan of decimating

science. And now since there's nobody in the White House willing to push back on that, he's just had carte blanche to completely eviscerate this program. And I feel for the people at NASA who have spent their life building a career to do these amazing things, to do the impossible. As Jared Isaacman said in his confirmation hearing that NASA is capable of doing the impossible and to have all these people build up to this moment. And then for some unelected bureaucrat over at the Office of Management and Budget

to just have some personal beef with the idea of the US government doing this is insane to me. That being said, there must be some things that survive, right? Is there anything that makes it through the purge? Yeah, so a lot of the missions that are cancelled or proposed to be cancelled, if you've made it this far and you're not like there's steam not coming out of your ears, one kudos to you, two this is all a proposal. This is not enacted. This is just a proposal. This is the White House saying this is what we want to do. Congress ultimately does control the purse strings.

It is the Article 1 of the Constitution that dictates that Congress does this. So the White House can say all these things, does not make it law. A lot of these missions that are proposed for cancellation are missions in extended operations, right, or in development. So a lot of the things that survive are things that are still in that what's called prime mission. So they're in the phase where they are attempting to complete their primary set of objectives. And so Perseverance survives, right? Perseverance still in its prime mission of caching samples that we're supposed to return with Mars sample return,

but we'll leave that be for now. Some other things that are still around. So Europa Clipper, right? Thankfully that just launched. Spherx as, in the astronomy program that has some implications for planetary defense work. Survey telescope that just launched, I think, in December out of Vandenberg in California.

That's fine. Psyche and Lucy, missions to the small bodies in the solar system, the asteroid missions, are fine. Mars Science Laboratory, or otherwise known as Curiosity is fine. Though that one is one of the few in extended mission that don't get canceled. And Neo Surveyor, which I know is a,

honestly, it's the only planetary defense mission that survives is Neo Surveyor. And then Dragonfly as well, which is in development, which is the new Frontiers mission. So the fourth mission in the series that brought us things like Juno, Lycosyrus Apex, and New Horizons. So all three of those get canceled. But Dragonfly survives. Dragonfly is an amazing mission. Neo Surveyor, an amazing mission. Europa Clipper, an amazing mission, Neo Surveyor an amazing mission, Europa Clipper an amazing mission. All these things are fundamentally amazing projects, but all of their comrades are going down, right?

And that's why it's so important for people, for you, the listener, to speak up and say that all of these projects are important. That we are capable of doing all these projects. NASA has taken a slashing in its budget every year for the past five years. We're already at the low water mark. NASA is still capable of operating 120 missions in development and operation, as well as the Return to the Moon program through Artemis, in laying the foundation for the Moon to Mars campaign, which is part of the exploration mission directorate,

and all the space technology and operations for the ISS, and NASA's capable of these things, right? But they need the budget to do it, right? They need to be able to reach for the next great discovery with missions like Dragonfly, DaVinci, Veritas. But they also need to be able to continue to bring back these unique views of our solar system and beyond, and support the scientific community that is still using data from the

Voyagers and using data from New Horizons and Juno and Osiris Apex. We'll be right back with the rest of my interview with Jack Corelli after this short break. Greetings, Bill and I here. The US Congress approves NASA's annual budget and with your support, we promote missions to space by keeping every member of Congress and their staff informed about the benefits of a robust space program.

We want Congress to know that space exploration ensures our nation's goals in workforce technology, international relations, and space science. Unfortunately, important missions are being delayed, some indefinitely. That's where you come in. Join our mission as a space advocate by making a gift today. Right now when you donate, your gift will be matched up to $75,000 thanks to a generous Planetary Society member. With your support, we can make sure every representative and Senator in D.C. understands why NASA is a critical part of U.S. national policy. With the challenges NASA is facing, we need to make this investment

today. So make your gift at planetary.org slash take action. Thank you. What about the Voyagers? We haven't talked about their fate. That is a great question. It was on my list to look for that one in my my frantic scouring of this document and I found a little bit of information on them. So they're funded in fiscal year 2026. They're funded at the level that they need to to maintain the science team that's on the ground, make sure that we can continue communicating with them and solve the problems as we have been. But it has this sharp drop off in two years, fiscal year 2028, where it goes down to zero.

And the little bit of information that they provide is that the Voyagers will continue flying and operating pending budget allocation and pending the results of the senior review. So the Voyagers are not, they're not red on my spreadsheet, right? They're not canceled, but they're orange. There's a number of missions in that category,

missions that are at risk, missions that if we don't allocate the right budget for NASA, they may not be allocate the right budget for NASA, they may not be around a couple years from though being perfectly healthy. The radioisotope thermal power generators, the RTGs, a lot of these spacecraft are going to keep them around, but it's not as easy as flicking a switch. You turn off New Horizons, there's no guarantee that you're going to be able to turn it on again

when a new budget comes out. That's why it's important to fund NASA appropriately now so that we don't lose these decades of investment, these, I would wager to say millions of staff hours that went into making these missions happen, and the billions, tens of billions of dollars we've invested to enable those capabilities just on the active missions alone, not even talking about the amount of money that we've we've put into the development missions. Don't want to get too caught up in like the sunk cost fallacy, but like for the ones that are operating that are perfectly healthy, that there's no reason to turn them off.

12 billion dollars. That's the value. healthy, that there's no reason to turn them off, $12 billion. That's the value. That's what I paid for, me taxpayer, paid for, to be at Mars, to be at Jupiter, to be out in interstellar space, to be out beyond Pluto. Where's my voice in this? That's where the planetary society comes in. That's my voice in this? That's where the planetary society comes in. That's my segue. Well, I mean, along that vein, as horrible as the situation is, we have seen a drastic

outpouring of just love from the community. The amount of actions that people have taken to try to help stop this budget and to speak to people in Congress, to try to get them to make and to speak to people in Congress, to try to get them to make some kind of change in this direction has been absolutely phenomenal. We haven't seen anything like this in the last few years of our advocacy efforts. Yeah, I mean, and I think I said this

maybe a couple episodes ago where I said- I know, but it's getting crazier all the time. It's been our most successful year of advocacy and it's only April or it's only May when I said it then. It's only June, and we've done so much. More than 50,000 actions have been taken so far this year by people. And it's a truly immense amount of support that we've seen.

And I've had folks in Congress mention it to me, have had members of Congress and their staff say, we've gotten your messages, we hear you, we're doing everything we can, but keep them coming because they're one of 435 members of the House or one of a hundred members of the Senate. To get a budget passed in a normal year is a harrowing experience.

Republicans have control of both chambers, that works in their favor, right? in a normal year is a harrowing experience. Republicans have control of both chambers. That works in their favor, right? But this Congress and the previous one as well has had a very tough time passing legislation. In fact, you look at the metrics, these are some of the most unproductive Congresses that we've seen.

But what they have been passing, by and large, are budget bills. And so that is, I think, one avenue, right? That the Congress can say, listen, we are gonna appropriate X number of dollars for NASA's mission. We are gonna appropriate X number of dollars for this specific mission. And that's important, and we're working on that.

But on top of that, there's also NASA authorization, which we haven't had one of those since 2022. And basically that is just yet another way for Congress to say, hey, NASA, hey, federal agency that we oversee, you should be doing these things. This is your mandate. Doesn't matter what the president's budget says. Doesn't matter what any talking head on the

news says. The law is your mandate. And the law as it's written has a very robust program allocated for space science and exploration. And the current authorization that's moving through the US Senate, it's a bipartisan measure headed up by Maria Cantwell from Washington state and Ted Cruz from from Texas I'm the ranking member and chair of the commerce committee, uh, respectively They're helping shepherd this room. This is yet another avenue And so congress has multiple opportunities to influence how nasa is going to be operating. This is not

Being decided today and so that's why it's so important for people to be sending their messages to members of Congress. And well, if you're not from the United States, but you want something to do, we've given you an opportunity. planetary.org slash action. We have a number of actions on there. And one that we want to highlight in particular is our petition. We have an open petition, global, international petition that anyone from anywhere can sign. Takes you 30 seconds, though I do recommend if you want, we have a whole section in there,

you can share your thoughts about what NASA means to you. These sentiments will be shared as part of delivering this petition. And we want to make sure that people have their voice heard by this Congress. And we want to make sure that people have their voice heard by this Congress. And as they're moving through with these pieces of legislation, this is your opportunity to have an influence

on that process. Because Congress is a representative body. They represent the 320 odd million Americans, right? They represent what the US wants to do in space or any other area of government. And so if you wanna have part of that process, we've made it very easy, planetary.org slash action. And if you go to our action hub,

which is available on our homepage, as well as planetary.org slash save hyphen NASA hyphen science, save NASA science is the name of our campaign. We have updates for you of everything going on. We have ways for you to get more involved writing op eds, calling your members of Congress, all of those things. So please, please, please. We've had a banner year for this.

Let's make this one for the history books. We can pull this off and turn this around. It would be the greatest thing our organization has ever done. And that's saying something, considering how many missions that we have saved together. It would just be, it would be the thing that I need right now because this has been pretty dire. Come on. And this is why we do this work, right? Planetary Society, independent, non-profit organization dedicated to advancing space science and exploration. We don't get some kickback from Juno. We don't

get some kickback from Europa Clipper launching from Mars sample return from Dragonfly. Like, we don't get we I don't see a check because of that. Right? I am doing this because and as you are to Sarah, right as as am doing this because, and as you are too, Sarah, right? As all of us on staff and all of us as members of the organization, we do it because we care, right? We do it because this is something that is profoundly human

to explore, to look into the unknown, to wonder, and to develop those technologies that, oh, they might just happen to revolutionize terrestrial economies on a scale unseen since the Second World War. We're able to do these amazing things because of the passion that we see. And so if you're on the fence,

there's not gonna be a better time. Let's hope I don't eat my hat on that one, but like there is not gonna be a better time to get involved. Yeah. And it's not just us. There are organizations all across the United States. We've spoken about this on earlier shows and not even just in the United States. Scientific organizations around the world are backing this because this kind of science truly matters. And I'm really hoping that we can get some kind of bipartisan support in Congress to try to change this. And I am wondering, because we're thinking of this from a primarily

scientific mind-expanding human exploration point of view, but there is a lot of different states' economies that's wrapped up in this situation. And we're seeing huge things like the SLS and the Orion program being cut. Lunar Gateway, a lot of these things that are very important to commercial entities. And I'm wondering if that is going to impact the way Congress feels about this as well. I certainly hope that Congress acts for any reason

other than it affects their districts, right? This is gonna hit most congressional districts. It is gonna hit every single state, a budget like this. The amount of uncertainty that it's gonna create in the commercial space sector. If you've listened to this whole episode and you're like, yeah, but commercial companies can do it cheaper.

They're on pins and needles, right? They are as anxious about this as we are, because they understand that there is no commercial case for scientific discovery. No company will have a business case that closes to send a mission to IO or to send a mission to Neptune. Only the government has that capability

and leans on the private sector. I don't think we can state this enough. Most of the money that goes to NASA goes to other organizations, right? Through contracts, through grants. NASA is the aggregator of that money and in developing their strategy for whether it's a specific mission, a slate of missions, a program, the whole fleet whether it's a specific mission, a slate of missions, a program, the whole fleet of exploration, they get the best and brightest people in all of these sectors to work together. A cut to NASA is a cut to those capabilities.

And so it's amazing what we've been able to, what commercial space sector has been able to accomplish. You have intuitive machines and their lunar lander Firefly and their lunar lander SpaceX and Blue Origin with their launch vehicles and SpaceX in particular right has has really just I think blown the doors off the thing when it comes to the reusability of launch vehicles. That's not the whole story. But it's a critical component of it.

It does not replace what the government's role is in this, in developing those missions, the thing that goes on top of the rocket. NASA is the best customer, right? It's the anchor customer for a lot of these businesses, with the hope that maybe, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, we'll have this sustainable space economy, cislunar economy, where we're gonna have a self-sustaining,

you're not gonna rely on government funding to exist. We don't live in that reality, not yet. Cutting NASA now is only gonna push that future further and further off. No one is gonna come in and say, well, now that the government's not sending people to the moon, now is my opportunity. I have this perfect business case.

No one's gonna do that. No one's gonna do that. No one's gonna do that for Mars, even going to low earth orbit. There's not really a commercial sector for that quite yet. It relies on the International Space Station as a destination primarily. That's all to say that this is of concern to the broader space community.

And members of Congress care about jobs, right? They care about economic growth. This budget, deep in the appendix of this budget, there is a chart talking about the civil servant workforce. Obviously they can't dictate how many people, the contractors that they hire pay for and that stuff.

They, government has control over the civil servant workforce. We've seen very little information about the reduction in force plan, the riff that has been looming over NASA and frankly all of the federal government that was due to the Office of Management budget about a month and a half ago. We've seen very little details. This is the first bit of information about this. And they propose slashing NASA's civil servant workforce by one third. And that's not counting JPL because they're

what's called a federally funded research and development center, an FFRDC, real technical way. They're a NASA center, but like not there they're not civil servants, right? They're employees of Caltech. Yeah, but they're still facing all these issues with, you know, the return to office mandate and the way that the budget falls out on their workforce. They've lost so many people.

So I can't even imagine what it's going to be like at these other facilities getting hit directly for one third. My gosh. Right. I mean, that's that's been the thing. JPL has had to lay off a number of people and the other centers have not had to do that quite yet. These civil servants, this one third of them that would get let go are going to have huge reverberations. So for every civil servant at a NASA center or facility, these 17, 18,000 some people, plus the folks over at JPL.

For every one of those, that equates to 16 jobs in the local economy throughout the country. And so for every one person that's laid off, imagine it is a total of 17, because you cut the workforce down by a third, and it might even be more than that, just because of the way contracting and support works, that these economies are gonna be absolutely devastated

by this proposal. So if you don't even care about the science or the exploration or the big questions about who we are and where do we come from, this is jobs, this is local economies. NASA creates $75 billion per year in economic output, for the 25, 24 billion that we put in. It's a three to one return on investment.

And that's 16 jobs for every one job at a NASA facility. This is a economic powerhouse. NASA does the impossible and brings people along with that money that we spend on space is spent here. Yeah. And for the people listening out there, whether you're someone that works at a NASA facility or someone who knows someone who works at a NASA facility, which is a good portion of the nation, we're so sorry that you're going through this and trust that whether or not this budget goes through, we are going to do everything in our power with your help to try to turn this around. And even if we can't, we will keep fighting until our last breath. Yeah.

I mean, this is, this is something that's truly phenomenal. What humanity is able to accomplish through space exploration. And it brings so many people along with it. Oh, and we didn't even talk about this. The budget proposes completely just shutting down the office of STEM engagement. You think it's important to bring new people into the space sector? Too bad. STEM engagement, that is the whole, it's called the Space Grant Consortium.

It's some $30 million, basically goes to universities. Every state has a consortium. Basically it's a way for you to do community outreach and educational programs. It funds a lot of those like astronomy in the park type stuff. Little grants here and there, right? It's not this like, you know, huge amount of money going to such and such big

university. It starts there, but then it's, it's doled out to the individuals who are doing that STEM engagement, doing that programming. The budget basically says, Oh, well, like it's cool enough that NASA exists, that we're just going to naturally get people in. It's more necessary now that we have these people in communities doing education events, doing STEM outreach and engagement and cultivating that next generation of STEM professionals in order to keep pace with what other nations are doing.

Because at the end of the day, too, there's a geopolitical element. There are other countries out there doing space. Shocker. It's not only cool, but it's a boon to your economy. It's a boon to your tech workforce. It puts you on the cutting edge of discovery. Of course, other nations are doing this. They intrinsically see the value.

And this is a retreat from what is proven to be an amazing way to bring in a new workforce, to have a higher educated workforce, to boost not just the national economy, but local economies and advanced technology and I don't know, the little thing leading the world in scientific discovery, answering the big questions that no one's ever asked before. Those small things. Well, we're going to do our best. And if anybody out there feels like they want something to do right now, we'll put all the links for all of this on this episode page for Planetary Radio. That's at planetary.org slash radio. We'll also have

it on our action center. It'll be on the Planetary Society's homepage. You can find it in all those places. And if you want something else to do, maybe reach out to the people in your local community and see what you can do to inspire the other people in your life to look up at the sky and wonder because this is the great human endeavor we've all been on for generations, thousands and thousands of years. And this is not the end endeavor we've all been on for generations, thousands and thousands of years. And this is not the end of this story. We're gonna keep fighting for this.

Whether you're connected to a mission or a program or a NASA center, or because this gives you inspiration and reason for being. All right, you said it great, Sara, just that this is part of this century's millennia long story of exploration and discovery. And for it to whimper out, at least in the United States like this, would be a true tragedy. Thanks, Jack.

Good luck in the coming weeks. I think we're all going to need it. Yep. Thanks, Sarah. We'll be talking. In our conversation, we mentioned a number of links and actions that you can take to help support NASA science. I'll leave links for everything on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio at planetary.org slash radio. And for a bit of a happy update, because I know we all need it after that conversation.

Our international petition to say no to the dark age of NASA science has already hit 10,000 signatures, but we're not stopping there. We've upped our goal and we're hoping to reach 15,000 signatures by June 12th. We could really use your help to spread the word and we're so appreciative of everyone who's already signed the petition. Hopefully together we can make a difference. After all of that, we could use a little inspiration. Fortunately, space science is a global endeavor and there's something exciting to celebrate. On May 28th, China successfully launched Tianwen-2, its second planetary exploration mission. The spacecraft is on its way to a near-Earth asteroid called 469219 Kamo'o Alewa.

It plans to collect samples and return them to Earth. After that, it's going to continue on to explore a comet known as 311P Pan-Stars. To tell us more about this mission and the complex science of sampling small bodies in space, we're joined as always by our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts for What's Up. Hey, Bruce. Hi, Sarah. You know, this week the Eeyore is appropriate. I've done a lot of Eeyore over the years, but no, I just wanted to add to the…

We'll get jocular in a moment, but this is bad. If this budget goes through, I mean, this is tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people affected, what I've devoted my professional career to, just what so many people have done so much, just being shut out in the blink of an eye, it will set us back so far. If there's a mission you like, it's probably slated to be canceled. And if you have heard of a mission, it's probably slated to be canceled. I couldn't believe the list. I looked at it, unfortunately, a few minutes ago again, and it's just awful. So with that, I guess you've spent the whole show talking about it, so I don't need to expound upon it, but I wanted to add my, just shock.

Yeah. Shock and dismay. If this goes through, it's catastrophic at a level that we have never experienced with our space program in terms of the program and cuts. And I'm sure you went into all of that, but I mean, it's just shocking. And candidly, the conversations I've been having

with my friends recently have been absolutely devastating. Yeah, I just, I've felt so, I feel so badly for all those, all the people directly affected. Please, if you're ever gonna get involved in space exploration and the political fight, now is the time. And on that somber, exciting note, yeah, let's talk about all the great things, there's still great things going on in space, many of them from the US, many of them from others. And so, go back

to you, back to you in the booth. DG Well, I mean, the big thing that I was looking forward to this last week, because I need something happy to glom onto when I am this absolutely depressed. But China did launch their Tianwen-2 mission, which is going to a near-Earth asteroid. And then after that, it's going on to a comet. So we're going to learn all kinds of cool other things, hopefully in tandem with all of the other missions from the United States and elsewhere that are going to some small bodies out there. So can you tell us a little bit about the Tianwen-2 mission and about the global effort to understand asteroid research? Pete Liesvold That's not a big topic. Let's start with the

mission which is a little more constrained. They're headed to a near-Earth asteroid which is actually a, I believe it's one of the quasi satellites of the earth. So it's not actually a moon of the earth, but it hangs out and goes around the sun in a very similar timeframe. So it's very close to our orbit, not like going to hit us. But anyway, they're, they're going there. They will reach that July of 2026 and then actually do a sample return and trying various sample return methods trying various sample return

methods in late 2027, it should come back. And then the spacecraft just cruises along and chills for many, many years and then gets to a comet in 2035-ish. Each one of these we sample, and asteroids have a great variety in physical properties in terms of composition, even though they're these remnants of the early solar system. This one, they're even, and I haven't paid attention recently if this is still one of the possibilities, but it's actually considered that it actually looks kind of lunar-like. So it could be a chip off the old moon, which would be fascinating. One way or the other, they should be able to figure it out if the mission continues to keep working and We've got all sorts of stuff that have been doing asteroids and reason in future times the Europeans flying Hera

to the asteroid that dark slammed into Testing deflection of asteroids to see what it looks like these days Osiris RexRex did wonderful things at Bennu and hopefully will still exist. Well, it'll exist, but hopefully it'll actually be controlled to go look at Apophis. We'll see. And then the Japanese missions, Hayabusa, Hayabusa 2 also sample returned. So interesting and different. Some of the asteroids, they're different. They're surprisingly for looking like gray potatoes, they do different stuff. This one's a very fast rotator that they're going to.

It's like half an hour, I believe, spent. It's going to be a sampling challenge, man. Yeah, that whole extremely low gravity environment. They think it's 50 to 90 meters in diameter, I believe. So tiny. Yeah, still enough to take out of the city if it were coming here. So things to learn about that are useful. Okay, what other quizzes are you going to pop up on me to test my rattled brain. That's it, but I could use, hopefully,

happy random space fact. It is at worst, neutral, and at best, oh, that's neat. Yeah. Random space fact! Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe He fell happier already. Wait till you hear this. So, Phobos, moon of Mars, small moon, there are over 200 islands on the earth that have more surface area than Phobos does on its entire area. Uh, it is equivalent for those familiar with the aisle of sky in, uh, in the UK.

It is similar in size to that in terms of surface area. It's wrapped around more three-dimensional object and then, uh, and Lesbos and Greece. It's not, it's not very big. So there you go. All right, everybody go out there, look up the night sky and think about one of the happiest space memories you can think of. 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 with even more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with even more Space Science and Exploration. If you love the 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 a review and 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 person that we reach out to right now is one more person who can help us save NASA science.

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