New Planetary Society study finds that NASA’s cheapest science missions can’t replace larger ones

PASADENA, CA (November 12, 2026) — NASA is betting on cheaper missions to sustain its science program. But a new study from The Planetary Society finds that NASA’s lowest-cost missions cannot replace the science return of a balanced portfolio of medium and large ones.

The findings are illustrated in The Planetary Society’s new Science Mission Impact dashboard, released today. It tracks 143 NASA-led science missions launched from 1980 through 2024, across all five science divisions, along with their inflation-adjusted costs and 148,667 peer-reviewed papers associated with them.

In 2017, the National Academies recommended that NASA build a public database of its missions, their costs, and their impact on science and society. NASA has not yet produced one. The Society’s dashboard covers several of the key elements the Academies called for.

Key findings

• Very low-cost missions can’t replace the science return of larger ones. Most missions costing below $150 million deliver few, if any, high-impact science papers.
• Mid-cost missions tend to return excellent scientific impact per dollar. Historically, missions costing between $150 million and $1 billion matched or beat the most expensive missions in science impact per dollar, as measured by citations.
• Mid-cost competed missions generally perform better than directed ones. Among mid-cost missions, those selected via a competitive scientific process typically returned more science impact per dollar than those directed by the agency.
• Cheaper does not always mean faster science. Measured from the project’s start to its first high-impact science paper, very-low cost missions performed about as well as mid-cost missions. Measured from the start of science operations, large missions returned high-impact science almost immediately.
• Commercial lunar landers are trailing in scientific publications. The four Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions flown have cumulatively produced fewer papers than comparable NASA-led science and technology demonstration missions.

“This is a rich dataset, and I’m excited to share this work with our members and the public for anyone to use,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society. “We hope it provides critical context for the policymakers and NASA leadership to best optimize science return for taxpayer dollars.”

How the study works

The Planetary Society compiled data from 143 NASA-led science missions launched from 1980 through 2024, with life-cycle costs adjusted to 2025 dollars. The team collected relevant peer-reviewed papers, along with their citation counts, from NASA’s Science Explorer (SciX) digital library. 

The public dashboard lets anyone explore all 143 missions, with overview pages for each of NASA’s five science divisions. The full methodology is presented there, as well as the complete dataset for download.

Press resources

Authors Casey Dreier, chief of space policy, and Ari Koeppel, AAAS policy and advocacy fellow, are available for interviews. Please arrange with Jonah Bryson at [email protected].

Science Mission Impact dashboard: https://dashboards.planetary.org/science-mission-impact/

Science Mission Impact overview (PDF version): https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/pdfs/advocacy/science-mission-impact-overview-slides.pdf

About the project: https://www.planetary.org/articles/science-mission-impact-study