Explore Worlds
Find Life
Defend Earth
STEP Grant-funded projects
In 2021, The Planetary Society introduced the STEP Grant program: Science and Technology Empowered by the Public. STEP grants are competitively awarded through an open, international process roughly every two years.
The program funds credible and significant research and hardware development projects that directly relate to our core interests of exploring other worlds, finding life, and defending Earth from dangerous asteroids. STEP grants are designed to achieve one or more of the following goals:
- Provide seed funding that will take research to the next level, allowing future successful competition for other sources of funding
- Fill a niche not being filled or fully filled by others
- Develop innovative technology that may jump-start its broader use
- Involve, inspire, and/or excite Planetary Society members and the general public
- Take advantage of a timely opportunity
- Require funding that cannot be easily obtained from other sources
Past winners
2023 STEP Grant winners
A project that will compare different methods of growing edible plants in simulated deep-space exploration conditions, and a project that will study salty lakes on Earth that share characteristics with the past and present oceans of other planets and moons.
2021 STEP Grant winners
A radio SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) citizen science project, and a planetary defense project to use a new technique to study near-Earth asteroids.
Project updates from past winners
A test bed in the search for life
Updates from a Planetary Society STEP Grant-funded project.
Are we alone in the universe? AI may help us find out
A Planetary Society-funded project uses machine learning to search for intelligent alien life.
New insights into asteroid properties: A STEP Grant update
A Planetary Society-funded project to understand asteroids achieved its main goals and scientific objectives this year.