Passback budget breakdown: A 47% cut to NASA science

Sarah Al-Ahmed: A 47% cut to NASA Science isn't just a number. It could be decades of discovery erased. 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. This week we had planned to share some of the inspiring moments from our 45th anniversary gala, but in light of recent news, we're shifting focus. We'll bring you those voices of hope and celebration next week. In the United States, the Trump administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 delivers the biggest blow to NASA Science in 40 years. If enacted, it would cancel missions, waste billions of US taxpayer dollars, undermine multiple international collaborations and silence some of our most powerful tools for understanding the cosmos. 

Today, I'm joined by Casey Dreier and Jack Kiraly from our Space Policy And Advocacy team to break down what's at stake and how you can help. This isn't just a crisis for NASA, it's a defining moment for the future of space science and a test of what we are willing to stand up for. Later in the show, we'll reflect on what's at stake with our chief scientist, Bruce Betts, as we talk about some of the missions that may be affected by these proposed cuts and why the science behind them is worth protecting. 

And I want to give a special shout out this week to the North Fort Myers Public Library in Florida. That's where our audio editor Andy took refuge to finish last week's episode during a prolonged internet outage. Support your public libraries, folks. They're vital and they're under threat too. 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. 

On March 12th, we released an episode titled, An Extinction Level Event for NASA Science. It was the first time we shared what our trusted sources were telling us about the proposed cuts to NASA and specifically to the Science Mission Directorate. The reaction from our fans was immediate. Thousands of our listeners, Planetary Society members and space fans wrote the US Congress in the days after. 

Some were understandably skeptical. A 50% cut to NASA Science seemed unimaginable, but as it turned out, the threat was real. We would never make claims like that without doing our due diligence. As of April 10th, we've entered the passback phase of the presidential budget request. This is when the White House's Office of Management and Budget delivers a nearly final version of the budget to NASA. It's not the final word, but it's close. The Trump administration's passback proposes a nearly 50% cut to the Science Mission Directorate, dropping its budget from 7.5 billion to just 3.9 billion. 

I want to make clear that The Planetary Society is a nonpartisan non-profit organization. We don't endorse candidates and we don't take sides, but we are here to defend space science and exploration. It's why our organization was created. These cuts would cancel missions that are already built, already paid for, already delivering results. They would ground spacecraft, stall decades of research, and threaten humanity's ability to ask the biggest questions about our universe. 

There's still time for the White House to reconsider, but let's be honest, this is not a good situation and yet we are not powerless. The Planetary Society and space advocates around the world have fought back against budget cuts and mission cancellations before, and we've won. We saved Europa Clipper, we saved New Horizons, we saved NEO Surveyor and we are going to fight again. 

Today, I'm joined by our Chief of Space Policy, Casey Dreier, and our Director of Government Relations, Jack Kiraly, to break down what's happening and what you can do right now to help stop it. Hey, Jack and Casey.

Casey Dreier: Hi, Sarah.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Sorry to see you again under such dire circumstances. We've been doing a lot of work on the Hill. We came out of the day of action with so much wind in our sails. But we did discuss earlier, about a month ago, that there were some proposed budget cuts for NASA that we saw formulating in the Office of Management and Budget. Now we're in a point in the budget negotiations called passback, and we've seen a little bit more about what might be the real presidential budget request coming out. So before we pursue this conversation more deeply, I wanted to ask you guys what is passback and where are we in this budget process right now?

Casey Dreier: Passback is kind of like the last station before the train completely leaves town on the budget process. So it's where the Office of Management and Budget, this is the White House's accounting office, this is the thing that both controls the flow of appropriated money out to federal agencies and the group that controls and shapes and ultimately releases the president's official budget request to Congress. 

Passback is when the Office of Management and Budget passes their draft of next year's NASA budget to the agency and says, "Okay, here's what we're going to put together for you. You have one final say on what this is going to look like, but here's basically our intent. This is what we want to release." And so this is very late in the budget formulation process when it comes to a request to Congress. And normally when an agency gets a passback, they have a couple of days to push back and maybe they can tweak a handful of things. It's their last chance to really scream about something bad that they don't like, or they could appeal to the president directly. But it's kind of that last check-in point. 

And what we learned from this passback was that the Office of Management and Budget is saying, "NASA, your Science Mission Directorate, we intend to allow you to ask for 47% less than you got last year." So basically a 50% cut, which is pretty much exactly in line with what had been reported a month ago, and so the budget we feared. The outcome of this, again, we're still in the proposal. It could still change, but a 40% cut at the passback stage, to try to undo that by the time it gets to actual request? I would love that and I hope that that happens, I hope cooler heads prevail, but that is a dramatic change that is relatively unprecedented in terms of how this process works. And so this is why we're so concerned.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And that 50% is coming specifically out of the Science Mission Directorate, right? But how does NASA fare overall in this budget?

Casey Dreier: Our understanding is NASA would be cut by 20%, so that's about $5 billion. The, again, majority of that $5 billion is found by cutting science by 50% roughly, which saves about 3.4, or something like that, billion dollars. So that means there's still $1.6 billion unaccounted for in terms of public reporting that must be distributed somewhere else throughout the agency, likely somewhere on the Artemis side, but hard to say. There's nothing else that big. $1.6 billion is more than the entire aeronautics division at NASA and larger than the entire Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA. 

Maybe some of that is anticipated to be saved by the level of reductions in force that they're putting together in terms of costs of employment, but we just don't know in terms of public reporting yet. The vast majority though in terms of what we've seen, again, falls on Science to carry this burden, which you might not be too surprised to think that I think that's a really poor management decision.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, there's so much that's going to impact, but before we split that out into the missions, how does that impact the different divisions in the Science Mission Directorate?

Jack Kiraly: It doesn't affect each division. Not every division within NASA SMD is hit exactly the same. And so as in the first Trump administration, Earth Science takes a pretty considerable hit in this budget request or this version of the budget request. But notably in the public reporting that we've seen is astrophysics takes a huge hit, something close to 60 or 70% of their budget.

Casey Dreier: 68%.

Jack Kiraly: 68% of their-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's huge.

Jack Kiraly: I mean, these are the folks that brought us the James Webb Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory and are currently building, and I saw literally a month ago in the cleanroom at Goddard, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is the next major flagship mission of theirs that is quite literally close to launch in just under two years. They're doing the final testing on it. They also just recently launched the SPHEREx mission, which in addition to doing a sky survey, is also going to be very capable in finding near-Earth objects sort of as a secondary objective. 

And then of course, Planetary Science division gets a 30% cut. So of all the divisions, Planetary Science seems to fare pretty well, but that's still a 30% cut. And we saw what happened with just the small cuts that we saw, relatively small cuts, half a billion dollars in the last two fiscal years. That's hundreds if not thousands of jobs across the country, indefinite delays and maybe even cancellations of some of our favorite missions. And this is a division which we're talking in terms of billions here, but even just that $5 billion off the top of the NASA budget, 20% of its budget, most of it coming out of Science is detrimental to the program. And so whether you care about astrophysics or heliophysics, the science of the sun, this is a potentially cataclysmic event for all of NASA Science.

Casey Dreier: I was shocked by the astrophysics, frankly. I expected Earth Science to take it in the chin because obviously of the issues with the polarization that's formed around climate and climate change and monitoring, but I did not expect astrophysics to fare so poorly. I mean, in this budget proposal, astrophysics would go from functionally 1.5 billion to 500 million. And they say you can keep running James Webb and Hubble Space Telescope, which if you do the math, that's basically half of that number and then you're left with 250 million to run ... You can't run basically many other telescopes and the research. There's the huge amounts of scientific research that astrophysics supports through grants, not to mention building the future space telescopes. 

So Nancy Grace Roman is almost built, as Jack said, and it is a poster child for a good project management. This is not a second James Webb Space Telescope budget fiasco. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is on budget, it's on schedule. It is set to launch as soon as late next year. So we are a year away from this thing launching, and this is going to be an exoplanet survey and dark energy detecting machine. And to cancel it at this stage, not only is it a waste of roughly $4 billion of taxpayer money that we've spent on this so far, but the lesson is to what not be on budget or schedule. It's just a poor management. 

This is not a budget that is in a sense focused on efficiency in that sense, and this is not a budget that screams good, smart management. This is a budget of destruction and retrenchment. And the consequences of this, of wiping out so many of our, not just missions, but the support for the actual students and teachers and researchers that do the science return from this data would be felt if this happens as proposed. It would fundamentally alter the US, the United States' relationship to space science, and it would fundamentally present a far smaller vestigial version of itself than we're used to seeing in our lifetimes.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We knew this might be a possibility, but it makes my experience at the day of action just a few weeks ago, feel like a million years ago. I was literally in Representative Ivey's office from Maryland picking up a Nancy Grace Roman pin, not just a few weeks ago. And now we're in a space where potentially it's not even going to happen. That kind of cut to astrophysics as someone who comes from the astrophysics world would be absolutely devastating to everyone that does research and all of the students, but we're talking about massive cuts all across the board. How does this impact Planetary Science missions specifically?

Jack Kiraly: What we know right now is very little. Now what has been reported publicly has primarily been leaks, a lot of it has been pertaining to just top line numbers. But looking at what the Planetary Science division has in operation right now, there's a number of missions in what is called extended operations. These are missions that have completed their prime mission but are still healthy, viable spacecraft with working instruments at destinations throughout the solar system that it's a few million dollars generally operating costs, staff time to support these missions, continuing to provide gigabits, terabits of data about places all across our solar system. 

And so this is the Mars rovers, this is Curiosity, which I believe is in its second extended operation, the Juno mission is in I think extended mission two or three, New Horizons, which flew by Pluto is still doing planetary science in sort of the Kuiper Belt. Missions all across the solar system are still in extended operations, plus we have these missions in development, VERITAS and DAVINCI going to Venus, the Dragonfly mission, the nuclear-powered octocopter, which just entered Phase C confirmation. It was confirmed as a mission just a little over a year and a half ago. 

And then you have a number of missions in the smaller category of the whole CLPS program, which that also exists within the Planetary Science division. And so there's this added pressure that these budget cuts could create, again, the operative word, could, because we haven't seen the finer details on the emerging commercial space sector, which need a strong NASA to be their anchor customer in this emerging cislunar ecosystem. 

And so all across the board, these could be disastrous cuts, not to mention the research, the number of grants that the Planetary Science division funds. It's approximately 10% of each of the divisions goes towards research grants. And that funds graduate students, that funds research papers, that funds people literally on the cutting edge of science, making these discoveries that we tout every day that we are excited about that make headlines, that some old data set or some new data set that comes down from a spacecraft across the solar system, revolutionizes our understanding of the history of water on Mars. How could that be potentially relevant sometime in the near future? 

These are things that are already in place that have already been committed to by the US government, that billions have been spent. Billions and billions have been spent on getting these objects and assets across the solar system and to the launch pad. And then to pull the rug out from under them at this critical moment would be, Casey, you called it the dark ages for planetary science, for space science.

Casey Dreier: It would be, and it would be, I think I said grotesque maybe in my more personal moments. I mean, there's my personal, it's a revulsion to the idea and in terms of the waste, but also, to me, the implication of symbolically basically closing our eyes to the cosmos. The space telescope ones, I guess you could not get a more apt metaphor. Those are literally our eyes back out to the universe. And to wholesale decimate the capabilities we've built up to look is not just, I think a loss for science, but a loss for society, to say we are a society that willingly shuts our eyes and refuses to see these things, that would turn inward and down into ourselves rather than up and out. And that's not the kind of society that I think we live in, honestly, and not the society we want to live in. 

So these science missions, I think have a symbolic value by what they say about us that we're willing to do it, that we challenge ourselves to pursue these things, that we seek and have the tenacity to make them work, and then we integrate data and discoveries. We have no idea these breakthrough discoveries about the cosmos in which we reside. We face that without fear and say, "We're going to understand what this all means and integrate it and revise our understandings of the cosmos as the data tells us to." I want to add, just to what Jack was saying about missions, again, we don't have a lot of data on this yet. I did see in a reported context from Ars Technica first broke this story and then we saw other reporting from Washington Post and a few other outlets. They do specifically call out Mars Sample Return as being canceled in this concept as well as the DAVINCI mission to Venus. So I mean, obviously we've talked a lot about Mars Sample Return over the years and it's a troubled program, but the fundamental science is profound. And then Venus, I mean, we don't know about the other ones yet, but DAVINCI, that's your atmospheric probe. That's where the interesting stuff is, right? That's where that phosphine was detected. 

These are all minor, minor bits of the overall amount of federal spending that we're talking about here, that round to zero in the course of how much money the US government spends every year. But again, these are not replaceable. And I keep telling people that there's no private option for these missions. There's no replacement willing private company or organization or even billionaire willing to just single-handedly pay for Mars Sample Return. Once these are gone, they're gone. 

The idea too, that Jack was putting forward, you can do the math and say if you lost 30% of your budget or half of your budget or astrophysics, 70% of your budget in one year and you have to cut to the bone, you will have to cut missions that are flying, that are returning data because there will be no other option. And so these are reasonable outcomes to worry about. And exactly which mission would get cut or cut back or completely turned off and left to tumble into the void, we don't again fully know, but some would have to be. In fact, quite a few would have to be. And that's math, right? So that's where we are is that we're looking at the math and the math is very bad should this go forward.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There is so much there we would lose that it's almost unfathomable. And I'm in this place where I have to have some kind of hope that we can potentially turn this around because the consequences would be so absolutely devastating that I'm kind of incapable of grappling with it. It's not just about the discoveries we make. It's about the human lives that are going to be changed by this. There are so many people who will have to leave space science entirely or go to another country in order to seek opportunities. Or just on the side of the students and the children, think about how many people won't go into this field at all because the opportunities were stolen from them. It could take us decades conceivably to build this back up if this comes to fruition.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. I mean if you have to turn off Voyager, which is, it's a heliophysics mission. Heliophysics gets cut by in this budget proposal, I think something like 55%. Voyager costs 7 million a year to run, but every million will count in that situation. Do you turn off Voyager? Even if you built a new Voyager, you wouldn't get to where Voyager is now for 50 years. And just the distances, the locale, the fact that a lot of these missions are in situ, they go to where the data is means you can't turn them back on and you can't just replace them overnight. Literally, you're right, it will take decades. And in the meantime, you have these huge gaps of data. 

We haven't talked about Earth Science. One of the incredibly valuable things about what NASA Earth Science does is give you these long timeline information data sets about our own planet. This is climate related, but also super practical stuff in terms of water levels, moisture, just seeing where there's carbon dioxide blooms and things that identify potential issues around the planet. And these long-term time series data sets are literally priceless. It's how you interpret changing climates and changing even, not even climate level, but just weather and other types of patterns because you have context to measure it against. 

And a lot of these missions, I think the other thing I always like to emphasize, Earth Science maybe has the most potential for having additional data come from commercial partners. But the types of instrumentation that NASA makes for its science missions, exquisitely designed, intensely sensitive, and the key here is calibrated. All of these missions have instrumentation. Maybe, Sarah, on happier times we can talk or you can have a guest to talk about the problems of measurement just like as a philosophical challenge. But the idea is how do you know confidently that you've measured something accurately if you don't have another way to check it? 

And so this is the idea of calibrating your instrument. You test it with a variety of things that you know, and every instrument that you make with human hands has some strange off ... The physical world as any engineer would tell you, it's much more irritating to work on than the ideal physical plane of idealized spheres and infinite planes of physics 101, and so you have to account for this. And if you don't account for it, you can't fully know if the data you're collecting is accurate. And so these exquisitely calibrated instruments allow us to be confident over time that we are measuring the same things in the same ways. 

Commercial sensors can provide a lot of helpful additional data, particularly with Earth where they tend to be, but they are very different standards because their customer base is completely different and their needs are very different. And the calibration pipelines and structures they use can be public or private or it might be one of the competitive advantages, so they don't share it and you just have to trust them a lot more. It's a completely different situation to work in. And that's the type of thing that happens when you turn off these NASA Science missions that are public and open, share their data, share their calibration, and everyone can validate it, everyone can check it and everyone can use it. 

It's easy to talk about how bad it is in a way because it's so bad, or maybe it's hard to talk about how bad it is because it's so bad. It is hard to process. And I think we had inklings that this could happen. And I feel a lot of people maybe couldn't process that this was really real, because it's so obviously bad and may still be processing it right now.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. When we went out with our statement, was it a month ago when the rumors of this cut first reared their ugly head over at Ars Technica? And the response we got, obviously, I think for a lot of people it was fulfilling to see an organization taking a stand against deep cuts. This is truly an existential threat to the earth and space sciences. But there was, I think as there probably should be, some healthy skepticism, but almost a denialism at times of, well, there's no way this could possibly be the priorities of the administration. There are a lot of pointing to Elon Musk as being a senior advisor to the president. No way they would take an ax to NASA. 

But I think this goes to show that with this current climate that we're in, we have to be vigilant to things like this because this came to pass and I think in large part because the priorities of the administration are being ironed out as we're seeing them. And this is a situation where we need everyone on board. We need Republicans, Democrats, Independents, people all across the country, all across the world to speak out against what these cuts mean, not just to the immediate, the jobs, which I will say just on that, Bureau of Economic Analysis actually just put out their most recent data set on the space economy. 

NASA funding and specifically, or I guess more broadly, government funding, is what's driving a lot of the growth in the space economy because it is that anchor customer. Whether it is NASA, which we obviously are focusing on here, or the Department of Energy, NOAA, Department of Defense. The government is an anchor customer for a lot of these emerging industries and we see a lot of this growth. I go on social media every day, probably too much, and see the excitement that people have around commercial space. None of that would exist, backed up by data. None of that would exist without a good full-faith partner in the US government. 

So what can we do about this? You can write your member of Congress, I think first and foremost because at the end of the day, Congress is ultimately in charge of the purse strings. The Constitution lays it out pretty clearly. Congress is in charge of the appropriations process. And as much as we can focus on what's bad, and sometimes it's hard to wrap our head around how bad it can be, I feel like every time I talk about this or think about this, there's a new layer or perspective. 

But at the end of the day, the administration puts out their budget request every year. This happens all the time. This is how the process works. Sometime in the early part of the year, administration puts out the proposal, laying out their priorities, exemplifying this is the direction we want to take the agency and all other aspects of government. It is then up to the Congress, all 535 members to iron out the differences between last year's budget, which currently we're operating under a continuing resolution, so two years ago's budget. And developing a plan forward that takes the input from the administration certainly, but also weighs that against what their personal parochial geopolitical concerns might be and developing that budget that is for the benefit of the country. 

And so that is where you come in because your member of Congress needs to hear you, from you, the listener, I'm talking to you, needs to hear from people all over the country about why this is important. And Planetary Society actually has a letter that we're supporting that asks Congress to not cut but to revert the NASA Science budget back to an inflation-adjusted peak. Currently circulating that letter, it's available on our website, asking members to join. More than a dozen have joined right now. 

This was the very similar letter to what we led last year. We had 44 members join then. We're hoping for 45 or more this year. This is that opportunity because this passback is but the beginning of a larger public conversation. As Casey said, this is the sort of last conversation that happens behind closed doors before the train leaves the station. But this is the beginning of the public conversation, and so you need to have a seat at the table.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back with The Planetary Society Space Policy team after this short break.

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, something I noticed when we were at the day of action was that every legislator we spoke with, at least in the groups that I was in, seemed to be on our side with this. They understand how deeply embedded this kind of work is in the economies of their states. And therefore, whether it was personal interest in space or some perceived kind of space race that's going on, or these economic reasons, I didn't hear from a single person that was against this idea of investing in NASA. 

But I did hear many people say that, "We're already on your side. We need you to speak to the administration and the executive branch so that they can make sure we get a budget that we can work with." What do you think they're going to say in this instance, now that we've gotten this passback back? Do you think that they're going to push back against it in a meaningful way and is that the most effective use of our voices to speak to our legislators in this moment?

Casey Dreier: I think that we still need to remember at this point that we're recording this, we still do not have the official budget request. And so depending on the specific member of Congress, some will say, "Look, we need to wait to see the actual official requests. Maybe they'll negotiate. This could be changed. This could just be playing hardball," which all could be true. I'd rather not be this late in the game doing that, but it all could be true. The cuts could be less. I would still imagine some strong degree of cuts would be present either way given this point, but regardless. So until a budget has been provided to Congress, Congress basically waits for this because this is all impacting the fiscal year 2026, which begins on October 1st of 2025 this year, the start of the fiscal year. 

You have seen a number of members of Congress speak out aggressively against this based on the reporting. So it's kind of like how seriously do you take this reporting? Do you consider it an accurate coverage? We do, by the way. I'll just emphasize Jack and I do. I think there's a lot and multiple outlets in addition to Ars Technica covered this. But we've seen from George Whitesides, who we just had jointly on our live show from California. We saw statements from Chris Van Hollen, a senator of Maryland. He's the ranking member on Senate appropriations, the CJS Subcommittee of Appropriations, a very important role for funding NASA. And Ivey and others have made very strong statements, so that's a good sign. 

I think making sure that this is on their radar and realizing that it's important to them is going to be really important. So it's worth telling them this now to say, "Look, this is maybe happening. If there's enough pushback and enough public and nonpublic." Given the dynamics of the current political system, a lot of Republicans won't be making public statements, but it's very possible they can be making private internal communications to the White House about this. We'll take either. It's whatever works. And so the more we can push back now and drive up saying that, "This is not going to be an easy political thing to do, in fact, it's a frustrating and pointlessly combative one, and this is not your highest priority right now, is to cut NASA space science," it is possible they could pull back. 

Now, we just won't know until that budget comes out. The other thing I think that's important is to be prepared to start, particularly for those in the scientific community, about what these implications could be. And something that I've been telling a lot of scientists and those who are dependent in a sense on having missions and grants, or students who need this that are paying for their graduate work, this is a time to really start reaching out to your community and reminding them that a local community is benefiting from these actions and funding as well. 

So most people who say, "Oh, a space telescope or Voyager in the outer solar system? Great, that's too bad, but what does that mean for me?" Well, they might not realize that maybe there's a graduate student group or people in a research lab paid by those missions that work down the street from them, that maybe there's a scientist who's studying the outcome of that. Or that there was a company, a local small business who was providing various components to the Roman Space Telescope. By talking about those and laying the groundwork through local op-eds, through if you have local podcasts or even on TikTok or whatever ways that you engage with your local community, putting your hand out there and saying, "Hey, we exist here around you. This is your issue too," I think is really important to lay the groundwork for ongoing political pushback to this. 

So there's two ways to really be doing this. Ideally, you do both in parallel, but I tell people, do what works best for you, if you're an extrovert or not. Whatever works best for you, do something. And that can be as easy as signing this congressional letter from The Planetary Society. It could be even being a member of The Planetary Society and giving us the resources to do more work on behalf of this issue. There's a number of ways to help. So it's not set in stone. It's not over by a long shot, but it's definitely not the position you want to be in at this point, and I think we just need to be really clear-eyed about that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah, we've seen our members over the years accomplish amazing things, but it takes a lot of voices. In the case of Europa Clipper, it took hundreds of thousands of letters, and that was for one mission. We really need every person to get on board with this if we're going to try to save NASA Science. Maybe this is the moment that begins an epic journey. And in a few years we look back on this and we all remember that this is the moment that we rallied together to save NASA Science. But alternatively, this could be the death knell of so much that we love if people don't help with this. So I'm truly hoping that we see the same kind of rallying to the cause that we've seen in the past because it's been very effective when we've all spoken together on these issues.

Casey Dreier: Right, and look, it's easy to be hyperbolic to get attention. You're thinking when cuts are bad, 20% cuts to Planetary Science back 10 years ago, that was bad and it was bad. It's hard to be over-hyperbolic about the consequences of 50% single-year cut to NASA Science. And so this is the moment, this is the real deal, and this is the time. If you're going to do something, now is the time to do something. Because you're right, the consequences if this gets implemented are generational. We would have a profoundly different NASA on the other side of this than we have now. And it's not the NASA that I want, and it's not the NASA that the founders of The Planetary Society envisioned and we're fighting for, right? This is going back. 

And at the same time, sometimes these types of crises help remind us how precious and valuable these things really are when they're threatened. And I'm as guilty as anyone of this, of taking this for granted that there's just a general level of buy-in. And budgets can go up and down, but we've never looked at a 70% cut to an entire science division before in NASA history. That just has never happened. Cutting any activity by 70% in a year will not make that activity more efficient. The degree and intensity of that, that is a wasteful act. 

So even if you are sympathetic with less government spending, if you are sympathetic ideologically to more private sector activity and even less scientific activity within NASA, you won't want to do it this way. This is the opposite way to do it because this is a more of a destructive action based on how swift and extensive this is. And it does not give time to have ways to ramp down spending and to allow transitions to occur. It does not have time for management to adapt to it, and it doesn't have time for the basic professional relationships and groups and societies to adapt to it either. So even if you are ideologically disposed to support the outcome intent, the way that it's being implemented is anything but, and will again necessarily be a wasteful act of taxpayer dollars and a disastrous and inefficient use of both time and capability.

Jack Kiraly: Just to make that point finer is talking in terms of maybe a military strategy. If you feel that your government is overextended, that your front line is too far apart and you need to have a strategic retreat, by all means. That is the outcome of elections and the outcome of the policy process. But what we're seeing here is anything but strategic, and if anything is a wholesale surrender of the future of space science, earth science, space exploration, discovery, innovation, and inspiration for future generations to others who are only ramping up their efforts. 

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention, looking at just the future missions chart that I keep tabs on, other nations, particularly China, are laying out roadmaps for a very ambitious next two decades that includes a Mars Sample Return program, that includes missions to Venus and to Jupiter and out to the ice giants. Those things were in our roadmap called the Decadal Survey and looking at the space telescopes, looking for Earth 2.0, looking for habitable worlds beyond our own and developing the technologies that invariably have benefits on our day-to-day life, on the precision of manufacturing, on the capabilities of sensing chips. Doing these things have just tremendous benefit for societies. 

And that's why countries like China and India and Japan and the European Space Agency are all redoubling their efforts to invest in space science because for what you're able to do, on the budget that you're able to do it, you get so much economic benefit, technological innovation, inspiration for future generations. And you're a world player, right? You're on the global stage leading the world in these cutting edge scientific disciplines. 

I can guarantee you most world leaders don't understand what their space agencies are doing on a scientific level, but they are more than happy to trot those discoveries out at a moment's notice because it exemplifies the best of society, what we are capable of doing through our space program. This passback, this version, the numbers that we've seen, the very few details that have come out, amounts to a just rejection of that whole notion and a surrender of the future of space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's actually part of why I'm so surprised by it. The Trump administration in its first time in office was actually quite good for space science. They invented the Artemis program. They invested in a lot of that. And we're even seeing in the messaging from the executive branch that they want to send people to Mars and do all of these things. So it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot with their own priorities that they're touting very publicly.

Jack Kiraly: Yep, absolutely.

Casey Dreier: The first Trump administration is when we peaked NASA Science funding in 2020. I think we mentioned Elon Musk earlier. This is not a DOGE or an Elon Musk related issue, and I think that's maybe important to mention here too. From everything we can put together, which admittedly is not the most transparent situation right now. But everything we can put together, this is coming very much from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, who previously, he was very briefly the director of OMB at the end of the last Trump administration. And during that interim period during the Biden administration, he in his own capacity would release these alternative budgets for the United States, and he himself identified cutting NASA Science by 50%. 

So to me, that suggests that this is more of an issue of the director of the OMB who is probably operating somewhat on their own. And it's not clear to what degree this has full blessing from the White House versus just kind of go off and cut things. But it's inconsistent with the Trump administration's own stated goals in terms of leadership in space, but also inconsistent with the first Trump administration's actual decisions and commitments. So I think that's perhaps an opportunity that maybe this could be revised, given that with more attention on the matter. But it really, to me, traces back to the director of the Office of Management and Budget more than anything else.

Jack Kiraly: I will say this is also something that does happen in government, this sort of siloing of different responsibilities. But I think this generates an opportunity for input from the Congress to the administration, for regular people like you, the listener, to write your representatives and tell them that this is something that matters to you. Because if they don't hear from you, they don't know that it's important to you. And you don't need to say whether you voted for that person or not. This is, I think, fundamental to a representative democracy is the ability to communicate. This is what makes the US system so unique, the ability for you as an average person to communicate with your elected leaders. 

And so we've made it easy, planetary.org/action. You can write that letter today. And for those in the scientific community, I highly encourage you to do this, build that relationship with your local member of Congress or senators. If you're an enthusiast like me, it's a great opportunity to share what makes this so empowering and exciting for you. Because space transcends all the geopolitical, economic, demographic barriers that come up through the course of regular life that have become so prominent right now. Space truly is something that brings people together. It brings Republicans, Democrats of all the various stripes of ideology within each of those two parties to the same table, to be excited about the future and the future of science and technology and inspiration and global leadership. 

And so making that case for why it's important to you could be the thing that gets your member of Congress or your senator over the line and say, "I've heard from enough people that this is important. Maybe I need to take a stand on this. Maybe I do need to sign that letter being led by the caucus co-chairs. Maybe I do need to join the Planetary Science Caucus." These are all opportunities that this situation presents us. And so not to make light of what is a very dire situation that has left me, I think reeling from the gravity of it, but chapters of books will be written about this moment. Be part of that story. Write your member today.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, it's a difficult time, but this is the moment that our organization was literally created for. The Planetary Society was formed in a time when planetary science was essentially dead, and we hadn't seen any missions on the horizon. This is exactly why Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman wanted this society to exist. So whether or not we as a group succeed in trying to roll back these cuts entirely, we have a good chance because we have this grassroots foundation already built for us. We have people all around the world that believe that this kind of science is important. So if there was ever a moment for everyone to come together, it would be right now.

Casey Dreier: We're not going to give up on this no matter what. This is our defining issue at The Planetary Society. This is a marathon for us. This could be a long road, but a lot can come back and we've come back from a lot before. And so sticking with it and keeping focused on it, thinking again, why we do this, what makes this an ennobling activity, one of the unique and most precious activities I think that we do as a society, it's worth fighting for, and we intend to do that.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, let's go fight that good fight, everyone. Thanks so much, Jack and Casey.

Jack Kiraly: Thanks, Sarah.

Casey Dreier: Anytime.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: If you're feeling fired up right now, and I hope you are, remember, taking action is really easy. If you're a resident of the United States, our action center at planetary.org/action makes it simple to make your voice heard. Whether you're a seasoned advocate or this is your first time getting involved, we've got everything you need to make an impact in just a few clicks. You'll find links to all of those resources, including direct contact tools for your representatives on the webpage for this episode of Planetary Radio at planetary.org/radio. 

If you're listening from outside of the United States, you may not be able to call Congress, but that doesn't mean you're powerless either. You can still play a vital role in protecting NASA's space science. Start by spreading the word. Share this episode, share The Planetary Society's posts, and help others understand what's at stake, not just for the United States, but for global exploration and collaboration. 

Post your support on social media using hashtags like SaveNASAScience and #FundSpace, and tag @planetarysociety to join the larger movement. You can also help by supporting your own country's space science programs. Most of NASA's missions are international collaborations and strong global partnerships are more important now than ever. And finally, consider becoming a member of The Planetary Society. We are a global community, and your support helps us advocate for space science, education, and exploration around the world. 

To the scientists and engineers who are watching this moment unfold, please know this, you are not alone. We see you, we believe in you, and we will fight alongside you to protect the work you've devoted your lives to. We will keep telling your stories and keep fighting for science and discovery because it matters. 

Now, our chief scientist, Dr. Bruce Betts joins me for What's Up? with a look at some of the missions that could be on the chopping block under this proposed budget. Hey, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hey, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Man, a bit of a dour show this week. I was really hoping that we got to share the Cosmic Shores Gala instead, but we'll get to that next week.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, important though, important as was the Cosmic Shores Gala, but different scales.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Different scales, for sure. We'll get to the hope and the legacy of our organization next week, but right now we have an emergency on our hands, really. But we spoke a bit in the conversation with Jack and Casey about some of the things that could potentially be facing giant cuts or cancellations under this proposed passback budget. 

And just to put it in context, I wanted to talk a little bit about some of those missions that are currently in their extended phase or some of the missions that we hope to launch in the future that might not happen if these budget cuts go through. And starting out with the missions that are in extended phase, what missions do you think might be canceled based on what we know and what do you think we would lose if those missions got cut, particularly Juno and Voyager.

Bruce Betts: Yeah, so Juno is one, it takes so long and so many years to get an active working spacecraft at a giant planet that the mere fact that we have one that's doing great there, I would argue is point first. But you've got this mission that's giving us information, particularly, it was designed primarily to study deep atmosphere, so not deep in Jupiter, but deep compared to the upper areas that we see using microwaves studies. But they're also doing careful gravitational studies that are really telling us about the deep, deep Jupiter. 

And so this is not only significant for us learning about Jupiter, but because our solar system is kind of the laboratory we have nearby, so to speak, for exoplanet systems, and Jupiter is a giant planet and a classic example of a big giant planet. So learning about that tells us about the origin of the whole solar system, ties to exoplanet systems, et cetera. They're also incorporating more and more studies of the big moons of Jupiter, which are worlds in and of themselves, and they'll get new friends in a few years, well, theoretically. Well, Europa Clipper is on its way, so that should be good, right?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Fingers crossed.

Bruce Betts: Better be.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It better be after all of that fighting to get that out there. I'd be to devastated.

Bruce Betts: And Juice's niece ESA mission. Anyway, they're doing great work. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are of course the most famous robotic spacecraft ever that have done more over a longer period of time. They were launched 1977, they're still working. They're our two most distant spacecraft, and they're really far out there. They're into interstellar space, so they're able to study particles and fields. And just any information about that area outside the magnetic field bubble of the sun tells us something, and they're the only two that are out there. New Horizons will get there eventually. Pioneers are headed there, but we've lost contact with them. 

So they're teaching us about something that you won't get for a really long time any other way, and that you can't observe a lot of these phenomena except by being there. You can't use a telescope to do it. And so it'd be a shame to say the least. I mean, I believe you've used the term, cultural symbol of our reach as a species, which I thought was a romantic and nice way to phrase that. 

There's other stuff, I mean, Mars Sample Return, that would be a glorious thing to do in the future. That's heavily, heavily threatened. It is challenging, but we've got a bunch of samples that have been selected by scientists from Perseverance, carefully selected and left there, sitting there waiting for us or aliens to pick it up. I don't think it'll be aliens, just spoiler alert. 

And farther out, we've got the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which would be a great flagship mission of the future with a telescope design that would be designed to actually, at some level, image exoplanets around a hundred or more stars, where we see ones particularly of interest that are Earth-like, or at least Earth-sized, and are somewhere near a habitable zone where they might have liquid water and they might have life. So that would be a huge jump forward for us. And to lose that development, which is the number one choice of the astrophysics decadal survey for the future would, well, it would stink. It would stink, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It really would. There's so many beautiful things that we want to accomplish in the future, and we're on track to accomplish so many of them, and they take decades of buildup. I mean, how long have we been building toward things like Mars Sample Return?

Bruce Betts: And a very talented technical workforce that you can't do this if suddenly a lot of them disappear, and partnerships with all sorts of space agencies, but notably ESA and JAXA. We basically said, "Hey, we're doing this and you're doing that, and we're partnering together." And frankly, we've flaked on ESA before, and I would just hate to see it happen again.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Really though. But it's all right. We're going to do our best. We're going to go out there and we're going to write letters to Congress. It's going to happen, and hopefully we can turn some of this around.

Bruce Betts: That's one of the reasons we're here is doing The Planetary Society thing. We do the fund reporting and the science and technology projects, but now we're the advocacy side. The mobilizing, the grassroots support for space exploration is super important. Are we ready to move on to-

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Let's do it.

Bruce Betts: ... the traditional part of the show?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Mm-hmm.

Bruce Betts: I've tried to make it a little bit different and entertaining a little bit. Don't get too excited because we're going on to Random Space Fact. I did some calculations and looked some things up, and I had this theory, and I was so pleased it came true. I am actually going to borrow the Random Space Fact I use for The Planetary Report, our member magazine coming out, but I'm going to add to it for the Planetary Radio audience. 

So the amount of time it takes sunlight, light to get from the Sun to Earth is about the same length as the song A Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin in case you were ever wondering. Just imagine that. Okay, now, the amount of time it takes Sunlight to get from the Sun to Jupiter is about the same as all the songs on the album A Stairway to Heaven was on, Led Zeppelin IV.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: That's great context, honestly.

Bruce Betts: Well, for people who listen to Led Zeppelin. For everyone else, I'm sorry.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Come on, a classic. Next time I'm listening to Led Zeppelin I'm going to be thinking about this.

Bruce Betts: Well, yeah, because actually it's like, wow, I don't know. It's funny and weird, but it gives you some intuitive is probably the wrong word, but something like an intuitive feel if you've listened to these songs. A lot of the weird stuff I do, it's partly because these distances, these concepts are so odd that we're seeing the Sun as it happened, one Stairway to Heaven ago.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I genuinely love that. That's amazing.

Bruce Betts: All right. Best wishes to everyone. Go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about continued exploration of the night sky. Thank you, and 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 something a little different and a lot more joyful. Join us as we celebrate 45 years of The Planetary Society with highlights from our recent Cosmic Shores Gala. 

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 a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space, thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the Planetary Radio space in our member community app. 

Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California and is made possible by our members, space fans who believe in the power of exploration to unite and inspire. If you believe in that too, join us at planetary.org/join and help launch the next wave of discovery. 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, never give up, never surrender, and ad astra.