An extinction-level event for NASA science

Sarah Al-Ahmed: NASA's science budget is facing an extinction-level event, 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. NASA's science missions have given us breathtaking images of the cosmos, robotic explorers on Mars, spacecraft venturing to the farthest reaches of our solar system and groundbreaking discoveries that help us unravel the mysteries of our universe. But now many of these missions and the future of US space science are at risk.

A proposed 50% cut to NASA's science budget has been called an extinction-level event by our Chief of Space Policy, Casey Dreier and The Planetary Society is once more stepping up to protect space exploration. This week, I speak with Casey Dreier and Jack Kiraly from The Planetary Society Space Policy Team about the budget battle ahead. Why these cuts would be devastating and how you can take action before they become a part of the official US presidential budget request. Then science editor Asa Stahl joins us to explore the power of grassroots advocacy and the amazing things Planetary Society members have accomplished through collective action. And as always, we'll check in with Bruce Betts for what's up, with a small celebration of Lunar PlanetVac and a look forward to this week's upcoming lunar eclipse.

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 week, ArsTechnica reported on a proposed 25% cut to NASA's overall budget with a significant portion of that coming from the Science Mission Directorate or SMD, potentially slashing its funding by as much as 50%. SMD oversees NASA's space and earth science programs, including missions that explore our solar system, deep space, astrophysics, heliophysics and Earth's climate. But even before that article came out, our space policy team had already gotten wind of what was coming.

These proposed cuts are being driven by the Office of Management and Budget in the United States, or OMD, which is responsible for setting funding priorities for the presidential budget request. The final budget is still being shaped, which means that there is time to influence these decisions before they become official. This is exactly the kind of moment The Planetary Society was built for. To break down this situation and explain how we can take action. I'm joined by Casey Dreier, our chief of Space Policy, and Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations. Hey, Jack and Casey.

Casey Dreier: Hi, Sarah.

Jack Kiraly: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Once more? [inaudible 00:02:52].

Casey Dreier: I think Jack's tone captured our-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Really?

Casey Dreier: ... current mood.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, this recent news about the proposed budget cuts for NASA is truly dire. So to start, can you give us an overview of what these proposed budget cuts are for NASA and specifically for the science mission directorate?

Casey Dreier: So I want to just be really clear with how we frame them in case, and it's easy to kind of slip in and out of how we're talking about... There's a formal proposal that will come out in a few months or even a few weeks from now, which is the president's budget request. That is the actual White House saying to Congress, "We propose this for the US government," and then, "Please give us the money for our priorities." What we have learned though just today publicly is that the White House apparently is intending within that proposal, so this is reported, to ask for a 25% cut next year, 2026 for NASA's overall top line. And of that 25% cut, 50% cut to NASA's all science division, right? To help pay for that cut. 50% in one year to NASA's entire science portfolio is, I mean it's hard to express how bad that is because it is just historically nothing has ever come close to that amount of money disappearing that quickly from these types of projects. So we can go into it in the deal, but essentially what we're looking at is reports of a one-year cutting NASA science activities in half.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How did we learn about this?

Casey Dreier: Eric Berger from ArsTechnica reported it the day that we are recording this, first week of in March, 2025 and it's coming from multiple sources and we have our own sources within government as well that have confirmed this to us. So at this point, it's not finalized. I think that's the other important part. This is where the thinking is. It seems likely, but there is still time for that to be revised before this, again, official proposal is released.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And there are some precedents for large cuts to NASA in the past, things like the moments after the Apollo program, but you are describing this as an extinction level event for NASA. What programs and missions do you think are most at risk?

Casey Dreier: Well, when Apollo, we were stopping something. We were no longer going to the moon and so NASA shed a lot of things, but actually during that period, NASA science went up. It was a shift from mega missions, mega projects and human spaceflight to more to the space shuttle era, but then also to make up for that, investing in higher return, longer, bigger impact science missions. This is a novel approach, that there's no fundamental external motive driving this beyond I'd say more of an ideological desire to just spend less of certain types of government activities. The potential impact, so I mean we can do the math. So this is going to be my speculation and again, I'll just emphasize that, but we can do the math.

If you were the NASA administrator or head of NASA science and you said, "Okay, you're losing half your budget," what do you do? You can run through that scenario. The things that you will want to defend the most are going to be the missions in their prime phase. So something like Europa Clipper, which just flew by Mars and will not get to its destination of Europa for another three to four years. You don't want to cancel that one because it hasn't even had a chance to do its mission yet, and we just spent $5 billion to build and launch it. Missions like James Webb Space Telescope in the middle of their prime mission.

You probably want to defend as much as you can, any projects that are in their final stages of completion at NASA. Being assembled to be launched within the next year or so. That might be like the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. NISAR is the joint mission with India for an earth Observation mission and a handful of others. If you delay or cut those, you actually hugely, intensely increase their cost because you are at their peak complexity right now. You're assembling all the pieces together and you're so close to being done and you've already spent all the money. Those are the two things.

Everything else basically then is on the table and has to be because you lose... Again, you can just kind of put this in your own frame, right? If your boss walked in today on Friday and something and said, "Oh, hey, on Monday, your salary is getting cut in half." Okay, you're like, "Oh, how am I going to live?" Because you have budgeted yourself with this expectation of at least generally within some range of what your salary is going to be. So okay, what do you need to survive? How do you get past this? So I mean, once you have hit your very basic fundamentals, these top two things missions in their prime phase and in the end of their development, everything else is uncertain.

So what does that mean? Hubble Space Telescope, new horizons beyond Pluto, Voyager in deep, deep space, Mars Perseverance, Mars Curiosity, our active rovers and Mars, everything even is behaving perfectly well if it's returning good science, if there is no actual reason to cancel it, you may have to cancel them. Active missions getting turned off in the midst of their capabilities, and these aren't replaceable. We don't have a shelf, the US government doesn't have a shelf of Mars rovers that we can go and just pluck one off and launch it again. That takes a decade to build some of these things.

In addition, you have the entire US science community that their research funding, funding for students, for graduate students, for undergraduate students to participate in science missions to become future PhDs. That funding source is all from NASA Science and that's another thing that they could turn off very quickly, and they would have to ramp that down a significant amount. So you would be talking about mass sudden potential layoffs in academia, pushing students out of school because they can no longer have their graduate school covered by their research abilities or their grants from their advisors and just this broader retreat.

You just do way, way, way less because what you ultimately pay for with most science missions is people, because there's no economic economies of scale with science missions. Everyone is precisely designed to answer a specific question. They are not a slew of these waiting to go. These are all, once you turn one of those off, it's just done.

Jack Kiraly: And I'll just add, there's no commercial alternative to NASA Science. You can't go on Indeed and suddenly find a bunch of private sector planetary scientists, right? I mean, this is activities that the government undertakes because it is a core function of government, with commercial partners. Commercial actors are great partners of NASA and have made certain elements of this cheaper, but there is no private sector Mars Rover sitting on a shelf somewhere that you can replace Perseverance or Curiosity with. There's no Pluto flyby mission that is just waiting in the wings at some commercial company. These are partnerships between governments, between government and private sector, government and research institutions. Government is a key part of that.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, I want to build onto that because that's such an important part here. We have gone in the last 20 years through this astonishing rise of commercial capability in space, particularly in the United States, but globally, and that's amazing. I mean, that's incredible. And this isn't pitting one against each other. As Jack was saying, commercial opportunities are, they're a tool for science, but science as an activity is an incorrect application of requesting the private sector to do that. Particularly things like space science, exploratory science.

Going to Europa and saying, "Is there life there?" You will not get money from investors to do that because there isn't... It almost makes, it's like crazy to even say it that way that you would even think about that, but there's just no... You can sell things to government who would want to buy it, but there's no endogenous expression of scientific curiosity from the private sector because it won't make you money. And this is where I think we have to say what are the unique capabilities and why do we have a public sector space program like NASA to begin with? Because it will do things that the private sector and the markets cannot or will not do.

That to say those aren't also serving valuable things, but at the end of the day, we have amazing new launch capability. We have amazing satellite and communications capabilities because of commercial partners, but this incredible rockets, someone has to build thing that they launch right into space and the science missions, those are made by us in an expression in a sense of the national commitment, a societal commitment, to curiosity, to ambition, to working together to seek out answers to things. And that is a really noble and inspiring and exciting thing that we do and truly unique. And there's no backfilling this, to just emphasize what Jack is saying. There's no one waiting in the wings to fill this gap.

I think the closest thing that maybe we've seen is Rocket Lab talking about their mission to Venus, and that's a really cool project that they're doing, but it's an exception that proves the rule, right? I just had Peter Beck on the space policy edition the other month and he said like, "Look, this makes us no money. We are doing this because we personally think it's really neat, but any other priority will take precedence over finishing this project. This is a nights and weekend project, is a hobby project basically," which is cool again that they're still doing it, but it's a completely different approach than what we're talking about as sending breakthrough exploratory science that pushes boundaries of human knowledge that is just not going to be replaced.

And so NASA in the United States is the place to do this, a unique capability, and if we give NASA less resources to work with, we will just do less and we will walk away. We will abandon this incredible capability that we have spent the last 65 years, building out of nothing to be able to do this. We've grown up in a world or in a cosmos, we've grown up taking this for granted that we can and will go to other destinations. That we can peer back to the earliest parts of the universe because we know we want to know about them and it enriches us to learn it, and it also gives us something back to say that we know the cosmos that we live in better.

That is an intensely valuable thing that we are able to do. And so to walk away from this in a way that we believe is cavalier and maybe not fully understanding the benefits that we get from this, I just think would just be a terrible loss, a terrible loss.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It would. A loss that we would have to take decades to rebuild. And this is literally one of the moments that I think The Planetary Society was founded for. Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman, they created this organization specifically because they thought that they had to justify this kind of science. And I know we don't have to explain to the people listening to the show why this is so important. They listen to us regularly because they know what's important.

But I do think that there is an issue with the broader understanding in the United States about the value that this gives us, not just for scientific understanding and for personal betterment and our understanding of our place in the universe, but there's a deep financial risk that comes with this as well. There are many industries that are built on top of NASA and the things that we learn and many of the technologies that we use every day are actually the result of NASA science. So even if we take a more pragmatic look at this and step away from just the beautiful science that we know is valuable, there is so much here that can hurt us if we take this money out of NASA.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah, I mean, you look at economic impact analysis at NASA, some that was recently done as soon as last year showed that NASA has a three to one return on the taxpayers' investment. So for every dollar that we spend on NASA, we get $3 back in the economy. That amounts to $75 billion, it's billion with a B, in the US economy in a single year and over 300,000 jobs. And that's outside of the 17,000 civil servants that work directly for NASA. These are people that are supporting that mission or supporting the industries that support that mission.

And so this touches not just Florida and Alabama and Texas like in the days of Apollo, it might have. Then the extent of, this touches all 50 states and involves international partners. We're no longer the only ones in space, right? We are in a reality in which there are multiple spacefaring nations and spacefaring international organizations, things like the European Space Agency who are making great strides in setting really ambitious goals. Meanwhile, a cut of 50% to our science program and a 25% cut overall would amount to the US surrendering future leadership in space.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean we talk about, I think there's partners like ESA, I think always really good to mention that ESA's entire budget for everything they do is roughly slightly larger than what NASA spends on science right now. So I mean, just NASA is just an order of magnitude larger in terms of its ambitions and capabilities than even our great partners in Europe and elsewhere. So it's not, again, there is no one else ready to fill this gap. They will keep doing great science, but it's just at a much lower rate than what NASA's been able to do.

And yes, this idea of this intrinsic and applied value of space and space science, it's incredibly broad. And as Jack was saying, this hits literally every state in the union and multiple international partners, everyone, everywhere. This is widely distributed where people are working. This funds again, students and educators and teachers and professionals, scientists and engineers and technicians. This will reverberate.

The bigger picture again though too is what does it say I think about our society if we kind of willingly walk into ignorance or abandon a commitment to seeking knowledge? I'm very troubled in a sense by these bigger philosophical implications. I think why this hits me so hard, science is a profound and fundamental activity that is always relevant regardless of any immediate political swing. And I think we'll just keep emphasizing here that this isn't a partisan critique that we're making.

We have seen, even in the last Trump administration was pretty good for space science. This is one of the strengths of that activity that it applies no matter what our immediate domestic issues are, that it's a fundamental self-justifying aspect of why we go into space, through all the practical and big picture things that we've talked about. And it creates a foundational opportunity to maintain this unifying, bipartisan ongoing commitment to what NASA does, and it doesn't fall into partisan traps of validation and interest.

Human spaceflight also I think has a foundational importance, but at times it can be adopted as a purely symbolic activity through various political whims that I think is also very troubling. But science is a really important counterpoint to that and we need both of them. But the scientific consequences, I think again, just reverberate very deeply. I was thinking, Sarah, about all the things that we know now that we didn't know when my parents were born right before the space age. And in a sense, being born, while we have extant programs, we take that for granted. But when my parents were born, we had no pictures of Jupiter close up. We had no idea what Pluto looked like. We didn't know that the universe was accelerating. We had no idea that there was volcanoes on moons in the outer solar system.

There's so many things we did not know. We didn't even know what the Earth looked like from space when my parents were born. That was in a single person's lifetime. We've gone from, again, nothing to just knowing so much and having the tools and the power, we have the capability to learn so much more that again, to walk away from this and to walk away from it so dramatically. This isn't a slow step down to 50%, this is a one-year cut. There's no way to do that gracefully. And so the level of consequences and long-term consequences to our ability to do this and decimating the pipeline of skilled experts and the workforce that makes particularly the United States so competitive and dynamic again is, it's very disheartening.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We do have a history of this being a bipartisan thing that people support for many reasons, both because of the value of the science and because it touches every single state in the union. But do you think we're going to see a lot of pushback against this from Congress, given the political tensions going on?

Jack Kiraly: Well, so Congress still holds the purse strings, right? Constitution lays out the powers of each branch of government, and it is the power of the presidency to propose a budget for the agencies within the executive branch, but it is Congress ultimately that has to make the determination. They're the ones that authorize the activities. They're the ones who provide oversight of those activities and the ones that fund those activities. And the president's budget request is the thing that kicks off the annual budget cycle.

And so again, going back to Casey's earlier point, this is just a proposal that we have seen reported and has been substantiated from sources that we have within the government, but it is by no means the formal budget request. And so we're still months probably away from this process playing out on Capitol Hill. So that's why it's so important that we engage with our legislators and representatives in Congress as well as the administration to try and push back against this drastic cut. And we have allies on both sides of the Hill, on the House and Senate in both parties, political parties, Democrats and Republicans who have stood up for science in the past.

It was about a year ago as of release of this episode when we had 44 members of the house stand up. That's 10% of the US House of Representatives stand up and say, "We want a strong science mission directorate." And I don't see that abating and especially with science and NASA overall under threat through these proposals, I could see this as a real opportunity, a real rallying cry for those members of Congress. Whether it's because they support it for the purpose of scientific discovery, which there are them, those that care about the economic benefits and there's plenty of those as well. And then those that care about the national security implications of what's seeding the high ground in space, whether that is missions to the Moon missions to Mars elsewhere in the solar system, whether we want those scientific discoveries to happen because of NASA research that extends US soft power.

You can go anywhere in the world and see the NASA meatball logo on sweatshirts and baseball caps, and that's powerful, and that brand is synonymous with national security. And so whether it's for any of those reasons, there are members of Congress that support this. So you can go to planetary.org/action and write your member of Congress and ask them to be a champion for science right now. And this is the moment, right? If you haven't written your member before, now is the time, because we're talking about this in one episode. This news came out on one day, but this is a potentially months long effort that's going to take place.

The budget cycle kicks off with this, but the fiscal year ends September 30th. They need to pass appropriations by October 1st. They haven't done that since 1997. So we're going to get continuing resolutions and the debate over the future of funding for science is going to continue for the next couple months. So strap in and start now by engaging your members so that we can build that bulwark against disastrous cuts like this.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, that's a good pivot, if I can just jump in on what Jack is saying. And I apologize if I'm feeling and sounding dour, but this is obviously, we care about this so much and it's hard to see this singled out for such a consequential action. But we should pivot and I think Jack is bringing us to this good pivot of like, "Okay, what can we do about this?" And we're not going to take this sitting down. Jack and I were talking about we're functionally ripping up our strategy for our advocacy work that we had a week ago now that we have this news, and this is a crisis that we are now facing. And The Planetary Society, as you mentioned, Sarah was founded in another period of crisis and particularly for planetary science, but NASA science in general. If these cuts go forward as planned, it would be the lowest amount NASA spent on science since 1980, so at a 40-year low.

And that's roughly, that was just a few years before the society was founded. That was a fallow period for science. We have lots of ways to push back. The Planetary Society is in a much better position, particularly with Jack and the ground in Washington DC and the groundwork that we've been laying to create a coalition of people who care about this, bipartisan coalition of people who care about this. And to make the argument, right? At the end of the day, we have people like you listening to this on the podcast, particularly if you're in the United States, you have a voice in this. We have Jack there every... I mean, Jack, I'm amazed he's still standing because he's been running around DC all day every day this week.

And we have the ability to say, "Look, here's the consequences. Here's the benefits of why we do this. Here's why we should care about this, and we will not let this go quietly." We cannot force it. We don't have millions of dollars to give away or billions of dollars to spend on this, but we have our passion, we have our members, we have our supporters, and there is no one else basically set up that way that is independent the way that we are, that can speak up the way we're going to speak up about this. So going to planetary.org/action is a starting point, right? This is what we're doing today, but this is going to be months if not years long response that The Planetary Society is going to lead.

And so if you feel like, "Ah, why should I write an email? It's not going to do anything anyway." That's not true, but it's also just the starting point for a longer focused directed effort. And I really hope for those of you listening that you'll come along with us on this and support us any way you can, whether it's financially, through your advocacy or even Sarah, you were talking about sharing what is this that we do, and I think that's part of it. Even just saying, "What we do here is unique. It gives us access. It's a universally accessible path of science." You can just look at a picture from Hubble Space Telescope and you can feel something about it in a way that you don't, looking or reading an equation of quantum mechanics, right? It's everyone has this egalitarian access to the outputs of space exploration and science.

And then beyond that, just getting used to saying that this, we care about this and this is not something that the private sector will replace. They are tool to enable it, but at the end of the day, this is the unique responsibility of a public space agency and we need to protect that precious and unique ability. And then we will do everything we can going forward for the next however long it takes to say this is one of the most important and precious and amazing things that we do as a species, and we intend to do everything we can to support that.

Jack Kiraly: Beautifully said, Casey. I'll just say, if you are listening to this and you are not yet inspired to action, if you think that a message to your legislators is going to go unheard, I have news for you. Because I know a lot of congressional staff and these messages that they get about space science and space exploration do make an impact. I mean, I'm looking at our dashboard right now. We've just went live with our most recent advocacy action and more than 2000 letters have been sent. So you are part of a growing chorus of people who support this.

And they will, they will respond to your message. They will put it into their system. They will brief their boss, the member of Congress about, "Hey, our constituents care about this. This is a function of government. The US is lucky to have a system that allows such easy access to the policymaking process, and this is your part in that." Right? Civic action begins at home and sending this letter is you participating in this process and building that relationship with your members of Congress. Whether you agree or disagree with them on any other number of issues, this is something that's important to you and therefore should be something important to them. And so writing them is that first step to a larger relationship and to advancing our mission of expanding our knowledge of the cosmos.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Writing your legislator is a great, great first step, and we have seen these letter writing campaigns be wildly successful. In a moment, we're going to go over some of that history with our science editor Asa Stahl, but if you are deeply as passionate about this as we are, please consider joining us in Washington DC. This is actually happening at a really strange moment for us because every year we all go to Washington DC together and bring space advocates from across the United States with us, but that is only a couple weeks away at this point. So if you have the ability to come with us, consider joining our Day of Action because you're going to want to register as fast as possible if you want to join us for that.

Jack Kiraly: We take care of organizing all your meetings, briefing you on the latest talking points and budget numbers, giving you the tools to succeed in these meetings, and you'll be meeting with your legislators and their staff to talk to them in person here in DC. And what could be more fun than that? Actively taking apart in your government and telling them that this is something that's important to you. And they're sitting there writing notes so they can brief their boss and keep this in mind when votes on the budget or discussions of NASA authorization come up later this year.

Casey Dreier: I think this will be live, right Sarah? By the time that this publishes. An extra special reason to come to the Day of Action or at least Washington DC on March 24th.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh yeah. This is something we've been working on and I'm very excited to share that we're going to be doing a Planetary Radio live episode. Casey and I are going to be up on stage together with representatives from the Planetary Science Caucus, other members from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, and maybe even our CEO, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and we are so thankful to Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center for allowing us that space. We're going to have a whole auditorium, so if you guys want to come to our live show, we're going to be posting up our Eventbrite listing for that, and we would love to have you there.

Casey Dreier: If you want to join 400 other fans of space and talk about space in a beautiful auditorium and see Sarah and me and others I imagine are less important, but Sarah and me, come on, this will be a great opportunity to do that, March 24th. We will put the link to the tickets on this description for the podcast today and on our website. It's going to be amazing. Sarah, it'll be our first join episode that we host.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It will be. Oh and my first big live show in Washington DC and what a moment for it. No pressure, but this is going to be a lot of fun.

Casey Dreier: Indeed.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm really looking forward to it.

Casey Dreier: The whole endeavor rests on our shoulders, but we have so much to simultaneously celebrate and be concerned about, but again, I think it's just, this is not something we need to give up on in advance. And as to what Jack's saying, and Sarah, what you're saying, this is the starting point. To do something is way better than not doing anything. And even, I'll just add this, if you really just are not the type of personality who wants to make a phone call or go to DC or even write your member of Congress, that's okay. I get it, believe me. There are other ways to help. Even, again, if you don't mind this being such a direct pitch, just joining us as a member of The Planetary Society.

Remember, we are independent and don't have aerospace money or government money. Right now, that's an incredible advantage, right? That we are able to stay independent and speak our minds clearly and forcefully about this because we don't have to risk government contracts or any sort of other financial issues. What that also means though is that we depend on our members to enable us to do this. So the more members we have, the more donations we have, the more resources we have to do this unique work on behalf of things like space science and exploration. So there are ways to help, even just by being a member helps us do this better, and now is a wonderful time to join if for no other reason than this helps us push back on these types of threats.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I know there's a lot on all of our shoulders, particularly both of you, but I'm really grateful that our members are behind us, and I know there are people all over the world whose lives have been changed by everything that's been discovered in planetary science and our exploration of the universe.

And in those moments when I'm feeling super stressed out about this, because frankly, this is a really hard situation, I think about everybody out there who has been inspired by that, whose lives have been made better by this science. And I know they're all with us together. So whenever I start despairing, I just remember we're all in this together, and now is not the moment to panic. Now is the moment for action, and we can actually potentially change the situation-

Casey Dreier: Change the world.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... and save NASA. Change the world.

Casey Dreier: Well said, Sarah. Thank you. Absolutely could not agree more.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, let's do this, you guys. We've got a lot to go forward and to work on together, but now is our time to shine, and this is the reason why our organization exists. And I want everyone out there to know that even though this is a scary situation, you have all of us out here working every single day to try to save the science that we love and we can't do it without you, and we are so grateful for you being behind us.

Casey Dreier: Thank you, Sarah.

Jack Kiraly: Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thank you. Good luck, you guys.

Jack Kiraly: See you in DC.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back after the short break.

Jack Kiraly: I'm Jack Kiraly, director of government relations for The Planetary Society. I'm thrilled to announce that registration is now open for The Planetary Society's flagship advocacy event, the Day of Action. Each year, we empower Planetary Society members from across the United States to directly champion planetary exploration, planetary defense, and the search for life beyond Earth. Attendees meet face-to-face with legislators and their staff in Washington DC to make the case for space exploration and show them why it matters.

Research shows that in-person constituent meetings are the most effective way to influence our elected officials, and we need your voice. If you believe in our mission to explore the cosmos, this is your chance to take action. You'll receive comprehensive advocacy training from our expert space policy team, both online and in person. We'll handle the logistics of scheduling your meetings with your representatives, and you'll also gain access to exclusive events and social gatherings with fellow space advocates. This year's Day of Action takes place on Monday, March 24th, 2025. Don't miss your opportunity to help shape the future of space exploration. Register now at planetary.org/dayofaction.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: This is a really tough situation, but we do have a little bit of good news. Since we recorded this just a few days ago, our action center has been used to send over 11,100 messages to US legislators speaking out against these devastating cuts to NASA's science budget. That's fantastic news, but we still need more voices if we're going to make an impact. If you're outside of the United States, you can help too. If you share our forum with space fans in the United States or interact with our posts on social media, it really helps. Every like, share and comment helps spread the message so we can rally even more support to save NASA science.

We also learned on Monday that NASA will be closing the Office of Technology Policy and Strategy, the Office of the Chief Scientist and the Diversity Equity Inclusion and Accessibility or DEIA branch of the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity. The employees in those offices are going to be laid off. This isn't the first time The Planetary Society has stepped up to defend space exploration in a difficult time, and it won't be the last.

In moments like these, public action is what makes the difference. The power of an engaged community has saved missions before, and it's exactly what we need now. To discuss how collective action has influenced space exploration and driven real change. I'm joined by Dr. Asa Stahl, our science editor. Author of our recent article, How The Planetary Society's Grassroots Movement is Advancing the Exploration of Space. Hey, Asa.

Asa Stahl: Hey, how's it going?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, not great considering the news.

Asa Stahl: I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I shouldn't have asked.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: No, but also I'm really glad that we have set aside the time to talk about your new article. And I swear, I didn't plan this on purpose. This is just an article that you wrote to help us try to celebrate the 45th anniversary of The Planetary Society and try to highlight some of the things we've done over the existence of this organization. And somehow this conversation just happened to land in a week when NASA's budget is once more on the line in a very real fashion. So I wanted to ask you, grassroots activism is at the heart of what we do here at The Planetary Society. What makes that approach so powerful and why does it work to influence space policy?

Asa Stahl: That's a really good question to be thinking about right now. I think the word that's probably on all of our minds this week is independence. That we are in such a unique position as a member-driven organization, that we don't take federal money, that we don't depend on it, that the government can't lean on us, and so we can always remain independent of that. Even journalists right now are having this problem, and all of the scientists I know, all the people at NASA you know, are struggling right now. Regardless of what government agency you're working for, you're concerned your job is on the line. You may have even gotten fired in the past couple months, but we don't have that problem. Our resources are unchanged by this. If anything, they'll grow as people see what's going on and want to support our mission.

I think grassroots means democratic, and when we have that independence, we can maintain that solid democratic channel where what people really care about, they can then get behind through us. Yeah, researching this article, I think it was kind of like what people call it eye bleach. It was a really nice cleansing. I recommend anyone who hasn't read it who's listening right now, go look it up because if you want just a little bit of good news in your life right now, it's good news. You'll see that we have saved space missions before and when we are starting to buckle down to maybe save all of the space missions right now, and it can feel like an impossible task, to look back and see what we've done and that we have succeeded before is really meaningful. And it's because we've had this grassroots approach.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've got a long history of doing this kind of work, but things have really ramped up since we invented the Day of Action, which first started in 2019. And during that time, our members have had over about a thousand meetings with members of Congress and sent literally hundreds of thousands of letters to them, and that is what we have been using in order to enact this real world change. How does that kind of effort really translate into making space missions, well possible or saving space missions when they're in trouble?

Asa Stahl: I think there's a lot of different ways that it happens. One is just giving Congress people the tools to make arguments that they may have wanted to make anyways. Another is just making them aware of resources that they have in their districts that would be lost otherwise. What NASA centers are there, what grants, what federal money is going through space exploration into their constituencies, what jobs are at stake?

But then also things like giving people who are working for these missions who don't really know how government appropriations work or who the decision makers are, getting them connected with the levers of power and the people who are making these decisions in DC, like Jack Kiraly, our man on the ground in DC, like he did with Darby Dyar, who as I recall you interviewed after this victory-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I did.

Asa Stahl: ... we had with them because Jack sort of acted as her ambassador, staying beside her in the capitol and helping her get her message out to politicians who would decide whether or not that mission to Venus flew or not.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, Veritas has been a really fun mission for me because it's not launched yet, but these attempts to try to make sure that this mission happened have all been during the time that I've been at The Planetary Society, and during the time that I've been on the show. So it's been really cool getting to have that personal connection with Darby as she's been going through this and seeing how actually impactful all of this has been. But that's just one mission. We've been doing this for a long time. What are some of the other missions that our grassroots movements have actually helped save or get off the ground?

Asa Stahl: Well, you got to say Europa Clipper.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, yeah.

Asa Stahl: And you got to say New Horizons. New Horizons, I think we get, counts as like five missions maybe that we helped save. It just kept on almost getting canceled or getting canceled, and then we kept on bringing it back. It's like the Frankenstein of space missions, which is kind of fitting, I feel like, for a mission to Pluto. One mission that I did research for this article was Dawn, which we had a major role in this, but I don't think we talk about it much, not nearly as much as New Horizons or Europa Clipper.

And then there's stuff that's further back in history too, the fact that Carl Sagan was advocating for Cassini way before that ever happened, so you can really dig deep back and find out some pretty incredible things. And it's funny that you mentioned that Veritas was something that you were sort of there for all the advocacy and you got to watch it happen. So all that happened right before I joined The Planetary Society. I knew that we had done something, but I didn't know what, and researching this article was for me, this awesome way of getting to know all of what we have done and how that's worked.

And the people who have gotten involved, who have backed us, this incredibly star-studded roster of incredible human beings have gotten behind our mission. I recommend also, if anyone is listening who is a new member, who maybe hasn't been around since, I don't know, before five years ago, this article is a good summary of everything that came before that. We like to talk about it. We like to try and go back through our history sometimes, but there's so much. And Carl Sagan knew so many cool people that there's a lot to go back through.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I already knew that a lot of these people were into space, but it wasn't until I was working at The Planetary Society that I knew that they had been working with The Planetary Society to accomplish their goals. And that's a very different framing because I think there's so much passion, not just among scientists and professionals in the field, but also among everyday people and celebrities, and I'm not sure how they would be able to advocate for space as effectively without having us here in order to help funnel that passion into something greater.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, totally. I mean, I collected some pretty cool names here. We were talking, yeah, I mean, John Rhys Davies is on our board. We've got Arthur C. Clarke, Steven J. Gold, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Paul Newman, Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg. Those are all mostly sci-fi authors or people related to films, but then there's also the first woman to be secretary of education in American History. She was on our advisory council. We have multiple senators. We have so many astronauts that it's actually ridiculous.

I tried to figure out a way to put it all together, and I was like, okay, we have three Apollo astronauts, the first American woman in space, the first Canadian in space, the first Japanese government astronaut, and 27 shuttle flights worth of experience has been on our board of directors or our advisory council. That's crazy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That really is. But it speaks to the diversity of people that this touches. I think that's part of the power of space. We're not just doing this for us personally, although we love space or even for just the people that work within the space field. Why do you think that this reaches such a diverse audience?

Asa Stahl: It's universal, right? I mean, we all have the night sky. It's the sort of gateway to, I think, loving science in general. I always talk about astronomy is like my gateway drug to science.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's so true.

Asa Stahl: But yeah, as to how it appeals to people, I mean, I think it's just fundamentally, it's like something at the core of what it means to be human. And it's sad how little known it is given how much... As soon as people hear about it or interact with it in any little bit, they tend to get into it and love it. They just need that initial spark and if we just got more of that out there, which we try to do all the time, then yeah, I think it catches like a wildfire pretty fast.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I always felt when I was learning about science and trying to talk with my friends, or even when I was going through getting my undergraduate degree, that I felt like I didn't have as much community as I wanted around this subject. I was so fired up about just all the beautiful things I was learning, but it was really hard to find that group of people who were my people who I could connect with. And I think that's another really powerful thing that we've done over the last 45 years is bring communities together, and arrange these in-person meeting events for everyone to get together and celebrate these things and really feel that community that connects us across all nations.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I wish I'd known about The Planetary Society when I was in school. I had no idea.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Same.

Asa Stahl: Because yeah, I was looking for exactly that too. I mean, I was surrounded by nerds, which was great, but there's a specific kind of nerd who wants to share their nerdness and what they love about the world and learning about it with others, and not just dig down into it and do their research or whatever. So yeah, I also learned about some pretty cool events doing research for this article that I had no idea we did.

I knew about Planet Fest and that we'd done a bunch of those to celebrate the arrivals of missions at other worlds and things like that. I knew we'd done various anniversary celebrations every five years like we're having this year for the 45th, and we had [inaudible 00:47:51] celebrations, but I had no idea about the Planetary Radio lives. That's cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And this is going to be my first open to the public Planetary Radio live coming up at our Day of Action. I've managed to do some other live shows, but this is the first time I get to step into this role, and it's been really cool working with Matt Kaplan who did all those shows in various places around the world to share Planetary Radio with a live audience. So this is a new experience for me and I'm really excited for it.

Asa Stahl: That's awesome. You're going to kill it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, I hope so. It's so much fun doing these kinds of live shows in the past, but we're going to have an auditorium where 400 people can come and be there in person, and that's a great starting point, but who knows how many people we'll get to see in the future through these shows. So if anybody out there wants to see one of these in your area, let us know because we'd love to hear how these things impact your lives and how we can help you share science with other people.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's two sides to it too. Also, there's the bringing science and what we do to everyone, and then there's helping people who are working in science bring what they do to each other or to everyone else. And for that, there's all sorts of stuff that I didn't know we did. We've sponsored so many conferences. We have put on lots of conferences. I know that last year since I joined, we put on the Search for Life Symposium and brought world-class experts together around that topic so that they could learn from each other, and they did.

And it was really cool to see, we're forwarding this science in a really direct way, but then there was all sorts of stuff in our history around, I think we co-sponsored every single planetary defense conference in history. Everything, lots of conferences about humans orbiting Mars or going to Mars. We did a lot of things around Soviet and American rapprochement during the Cold War where we recruited Apollo astronauts to come to the conference and made it a bigger deal. And lots of stuff about space education. It's pretty wild.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I also love all the weird partnerships we've had. You wouldn't think space plus LEGO or space plus National Park Service, but we've been able to make these connections that we can share space with people in other ways. And I always love seeing those artifacts around the office, our cute little LEGO figures and things like that.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, totally. I had no idea about Red Rover Goes to Mars. And it makes perfect sense. We should do more with toy companies, right? Astronomy is so kid-friendly, and I feel like so many toys are about space, like that's such a natural fit. And so having something like Red Rover Goes to Mars where these kids are building little LEGO rovers and they're tele-operating them and bringing little LEGO figures around to different places and stuff like that. And I know Planetary Radio worked with that to some extent, didn't it?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah.

Asa Stahl: You were part of it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, we did a whole set of shows for them early on. I discovered a lot of that when I was looking through the history of the show when I first began. I'd listened to a lot of the more recent episodes, but going all the way back to the beginning and listening to the way that we spoke with those kids and tried to share their stories. It was beautiful.

Asa Stahl: Yeah. And then those kids grow up and they're amazing scientists and it's bananas.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right? I had Abby Freeman-

Asa Stahl: Yeah, Abby Freeman.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... on the show just last year who was part of that program.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, incredible. And then also Courtney Dressing, who was part of that Search for Life Symposium we put on last year, and she is a world renowned astronomer. I knew her name back when I was an undergraduate student. And so to see that, that was part of what built up her passion for space, is so cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've got so much stuff in our history that I'm sure the two of us could talk about this for episodes. And we're all reflecting on this together at this moment in time, not just for our 45th anniversary, but because we are uniquely positioned to try to help save NASA in this moment of potential crisis. It's not a full-blown crisis yet. It's not the official budget yet, but that's why this is so opportune, because this is the moment when we can enact genuine change.

And as we've been having these conversations, because this is a difficult situation, just this morning a lot of our staff got together to have a meeting and together we were reflecting on why space really matters to us. And I think you said some really beautiful and poignant things about why space matters to you and why you think it is so important for humanity in general and why we do this job. So would you mind sharing a little bit of what you said?

Asa Stahl: Sure. Yeah. I feel like we gave a really good mix as a staff of different reasons. Some people, it was very personal and emotional. My answer was a bit more philosophical and abstract, but I do think that it's true that in general, there's meaning to be had in exploring and in seeking truth fundamentally. And there's perhaps no greater way we have ever sought out the truth or explored then through space, through trying to understand and explore space and other worlds in the search for life.

And this just ties into, I think, a general truth about life. That meaning and happiness in life comes from unfolding your potential, in spending the abilities you have and in doing what's hard, not just what's easy. And if you extend that philosophy to humanity as a whole, that means exploration. That means, that's why Kennedy's speech of like we go the moon because, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. It rings true. That exploration and seeking out truth is at the core of what it means to express our humanity, and without it, we can't truly be ourselves. It would be like if we never created art again. We just can't be human and not do this thing.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And it's beautiful that we've taken that thing, that exploration beyond just what's over the next hill, beyond over what's within ourselves, but now to the worlds beyond ourselves and to the distant reaches of the universe. I just think about all the people throughout all of human history who would've loved to be here in this moment in time, and to know what we know. And to think about all the people in the future who will know more than us, who will look back at this time and think, "Wow, there was so much ahead of them." If we want to get there, we're going to have to work together in order to accomplish it.

Asa Stahl: Yeah. I have an extra answer also that's a little bit less philosophical and more simplistic, which is I think it's easy to dismiss what we have to gain from space exploration when you're content with what we know already. But the more you learn about what we know already, the more you realize we don't know anything. What is actually going on in the universe? What are we doing here? What is space? What is happening right now? And we don't know, and it's beautiful and wonderful to not know, but only to the extent that we can pursue the truth. And so it makes for a unique opportunity that, yeah, like you say, more than ever today, historically, we have a chance to pursue.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thanks for writing all this together and for sharing part of the history of The Planetary Society, some of which the two of us have been here for, and much of which was before our time. But who knows what articles they'll be writing 45 years from now about the things that our members accomplished in this time.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, I mean, I think we can already say so much that before I go, I want to make sure that you take the moment to tout Planetary Radio and its reach, because we found out some pretty cool stuff when we were researching this article, right?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We actually did, and this was something that I did not know. I was looking through the metrics, and it turns out we can officially say that Planetary Radio has reached every nation on Earth. Even the ones you wouldn't expect, the island nations, the places where it's really difficult to get information, war-torn regions, everywhere on this planet has been reached even just in the last three years. That is absolutely spectacular. We can actually say we're a truly planetary radio.

Asa Stahl: It's incredible.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's amazing. Thanks for doing this, and I'm looking forward to being with you at the 45th Anniversary Gala and to see all the coworkers together. And here's to the next 45 years of all the things we can accomplish together.

Asa Stahl: Yeah, see you in 2070.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, man. We can do this. Thanks, Asa.

Asa Stahl: Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: With everything going on right now, it's a powerful reminder of why The Planetary Society was founded 45 years ago, to stand up for space exploration and give the public a voice in shaping its future. As we continue that fight, we also want to take a moment to celebrate how far we've come. On April 5th, 2025, we're hosting a very special anniversary event aboard the historic RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, our Cosmic Shores Gala. It's going to be a beautiful night and I'd love for you to join me and my colleagues. Bill Nye's going to be there as well as our board member Robert Picardo, who you may know from Star Trek, Voyager.

We'll have other special guests as well as we gather together to reflect on our legacy and look ahead to the future of space exploration. You can get your tickets now at planetary.org/anniversary. Now for a little more good news, we turn to Dr. Bruce Betts, our chief scientist for What's Up. PlanetVac, which is a Planetary Society-supported technology built by Honeybee Robotics is now officially on the moon. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hey, Sarah. Hi there, hey there, hi there, hello there, hey there

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Man, it has been a weird week. We clearly have some work to get done when it comes to funding NASA. But in a totally different subject, there have been a lot of really great moon missions that have happened recently and we got to talk a little bit last week about the fact that one of The Planetary Society projects is on board. But since you're our chief scientist, I wanted to give you a chance to share a little bit about what happened with our Lunar PlanetVac.

Bruce Betts: Lunar PlanetVac, it's on the surface of the moon with Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander. It has sampled the surface. It is a project we've been involved with for a very long time that our members supported at two key points in its development and moving forward, one in a laboratory setting and one in a Earth, launch it on a rocket and have it come back down.

Anyway, the exciting thing is that we went from those development phases where we got them through to the next stage and then they were able to get NASA funding to being on the moon and picking up actual lunar regoliths using its planetary vacuum, but it actually forces air down, and not air, but nitrogen, helium, whatever they want to take with them. And it pushes the sample into the sample container or it can be pushed into an instrument or it can be for sample return. But this is, NASA shows that as a technology demonstration to demonstrate it works on the moon, works on a spacecraft, it does. We'll get more information for you in the coming days and weeks.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I'm really glad that of missions that have gone to the moon, it was on this one. Because landing on the moon is really difficult and we've seen with many of these lunar landers, them tip sideways, including the IM-II Lander, but Blue Ghost nailed it, so we just happened to have our tech demo on one that can actually do the science. So I'm very grateful.

Bruce Betts: Yes, no, that worked out very, very well and congratulations to Honeybee Robotics and their success with this. It's their project and this is great.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, it's fantastic. And in other lunar news, we've got a lunar eclipse coming up on either March 13th or 14th and the Americas, depending on where you live. Can you tell us a little about it?

Bruce Betts: Yes. If you're in the Americas, you're fortunate because that's where you'll be able to see a total lunar eclipse as the moon enters the Earth's shadow. And they will also be visible as it sets in Western Europe, but it's pretty well centered this time around on the Americas. It depends on your time zone actually, what exact time it will be at, but it will be at maximum eclipse at roughly 6:26 UT or GMT. So that would put it just about 11:30 for us in Pacific time and about 2:30 for those on Eastern time, assuming you've gone to daylight savings time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Daylight savings time is messing up my brain this whole week, but I'll put that on my calendar because any excuse to go see an eclipse is always a good one, but I'm hoping I can get my neighbors to come out.

Bruce Betts: I'll take an hour and a half from when it enters the dark part of the shadow of the Umbra, roughly an hour and a half or an hour and 20 minutes to get to the maximum, another hour and 15 to 20 minutes to get out of the shadow. So it's unlike a total solar eclipse, there's not a quick time you have to look at it. You've got a broad range and you've also got the entering the shadow and leaving the shadow. And depending on the Earth's atmosphere will depend on how reddish it gets from all the global sunsets and sunrises as the red light makes it through the Earth's atmosphere and gets bent and makes it to the moon, and then unfortunately gets called a blood moon.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, man. I have so many friends that have opinions about whether or not you call it a blood moon. It's so funny.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, I kind of do too, but I mention it because it's so common in the press. But it just seemed, I don't know, I'm a fan of blood, keeps us alive, but I really don't want to mix it with my astronomy.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Truth. Well, all right, what's our random space fact this week?

Bruce Betts: Recently, they've turned off some more Voyager instruments as the power decreases. Let's talk about the Voyager RTGs, radioisotopic thermoelectric generators. They are plutonium 238 and there are three of them on each of the Voyager spacecraft. It launched, they produced about 470 watts of power where they take the heat and they have thermocouples that change it into electricity. But over the very, very, very long pushing up against, God, 50 years, not quite yet in space, the plutonium, its output goes down, has a half-life of like 87, 88 years and the thermocouples tend to degrade.

So started at 470. Now they're in kind of the 210, 220 watt range. So in order to keep some of the instruments still working, they've gradually been shutting down other instruments over time and the power will continue to decrease and our little friends will go quiet at some point, but they have not yet, and it is amazing.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Really though, I don't know if I'm emotionally prepared for the days that we actually have to turn those off.

Bruce Betts: Voyager 1 is pushing 24-hour light time to one way.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Gosh.

Bruce Betts: It's so far away that the radio signal takes 23 to 24 hours right now. So you send a signal and you come back two days later and you get a signal back you hope.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's so long.

Bruce Betts: Kind of wild.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It is really wild. And man, talking with Casey about all of these budget issues, the idea that Voyager is one of the missions that could be on the chopping block is upsetting for me. It's out there, it's doing fantastic work. I know that it's far beyond its lifetime of its regular science goals, but it's out there taking measurements on the interstellar medium and those two spacecraft are the only ones that we've ever had weave basically the main part of our solar system.

So I want to see what happens with those. We've got to do what we can to make sure that that funding stays in place so that we can keep Voyager and all those other missions we love functioning. So this is my whole mission for as long as we need it to be.

Bruce Betts: No, it's pretty compelling when you're the only two spacecraft functioning in interstellar. But when you're the only two spacecraft in interstellar space in terms of the electromagnetic and particle environment, they're still under solar gravitational influence and will be for a long time, but they will keep going and never come back. So keep them going as long as we can.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Right? Just in case having a little part of our human civilization out there, wandering among the stars would make me feel real happy. And no matter what happens, they're going to be going whether or not we're continuing on the mission on our side, so it'll be all right.

Bruce Betts: Okay. There you heard it everyone. Sarah says it'll be all right, so I'm not panicking.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I might be, but it's okay. This is fine.

Bruce Betts: It's all good. It's not, but we'll try to make it that way and with the help of our members, we will get there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: All right.

Bruce Betts: All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky and think about Voyager spacecraft, so, so very far away, just partying down and having a good time. Thank you. Good night.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with more space science and exploration. If you love the show, you can get Planetary Radio T-shirts at planetary.org/shop, along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty and joy of space science and exploration by leaving your 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. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email, at [email protected]. Or if you're a society member, leave a comment on the Planetary Radio space in our member community app.

Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by our members from all over this planet who will never stop working together to advance the future of space science and exploration. You can join us and help save NASA's science programs at planetary.org/join. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra and keep fighting that good fight.