The Space Advocate Newsletter, October 2025

This month

🔒 NASA shutdown: 85% furloughed; more JPL layoffs.
📣 Historic Day of Action brings hundreds to D.C.
🛰️ OSIRIS-APEX is saved from termination.

We remain in limbo. The ongoing government shutdown has functionally paused most of NASA’s work (with 85% of the workforce furloughed without pay). The political attention is all on the shutdown, not future appropriations, meaning that the near-term future of NASA science remains unresolved.

The White House, following through on earlier threats, has now fired thousands of civil servants throughout the government. NASA, so far, has been spared. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was not so fortunate. The lab announced another round of layoffs last week, affecting over 500 people. This was unrelated to the shutdown; a result of continued cuts to Mars Sample Return and the lack of new projects to support the lab. JPL has now shed roughly 25% of its workforce since the start of last year.

Despite all of this, there are reasons for hope.

For one, there was the incredible turnout for the Save NASA Science Day of Action in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Nearly 300 advocates from 38 states and the District of Columbia came to advocate for space science and exploration — all on their own dime and on their own time.

It’s hard to say for certain, but I’m pretty confident that this was the largest group of space supporters to ever participate in a coordinated advocacy event in the U.S. Capitol.

We did a press blitz as well, with a press conference at the Capitol with Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye, leadership of our partner organizations, and Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-MD). Bill and I also made a slate of live TV appearances on MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, and BBC News. My colleague, Jack Kiraly, has a great write-up of the event.

We’ve also confirmed that, just prior to the shutdown, NASA received official guidance to implement a budget consistent with the proposal in the House of Representatives during a continuing resolution. This is a remarkable change after months of insisting that the agency was planning to impose the White House’s budget cuts on Oct. 1. The House budget maintains NASA’s topline of $25 billion, but does cut science by 18%, with most of those cuts directed at Earth Science. That’s obviously not great, but nonetheless represents a substantial improvement over the original 47% cut put forward by the White House.

Despite the shutdown currently disrupting such plans, we’ve already seen results: the OSIRIS-APEX mission — a repurposed spacecraft slated to visit the near-Earth asteroid Apophis in 2027 — is no longer facing termination. It was one of the 19 missions canceled in the original White House budget. That’s great news.

My point is this: things can get better. The threat to NASA science remains very real, but so does the support for NASA science. We are seeing significant progress in Congress, in the press, and at NASA itself. That doesn’t mean we stop now; it should only motivate us to work harder.

Until next month,

Casey Dreier
Chief of Space Policy
The Planetary Society

Want to do something?

Our Save NASA Science Action Hub has the latest actions, resources, and updates, including an updated action to write to Congress in reaction to the layoffs at JPL.

What I’m reading this month

Sierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare. Dream Chaser, intended to be the third cargo resupply service to the ISS, has all but been canceled. NASA announced that the company will not do a “free flying” demonstration, aka neither dock with the ISS nor bring cargo to it. Eric Berger’s great piece in ArsTechnica reminds us that commercial partnerships carry their own set of unique risks — not every company is a SpaceX.

4,000 gone: Inside NASA’s brain drain. I can’t recommend this piece by my colleague Asa Stahl enough. He captures the frustration and sense of waste incurred by the massive loss of talent at NASA, now including over 500 more layoffs at JPL.

Isaacman back in the running for NASA Administrator. Yes, really. The storied saga continues.

Check me out on the “Smart Girl, Dumb Questions” podcast. Host Nayeema Raza is a great interviewer, and we explored many big-picture aspects of space science beyond my usual policy focus. You can also watch it on YouTube.

Ground Truth

Data visualization and analysis

No chart this month. Instead, I’ll let this picture of all of the space science advocates at the Save NASA Science Day of Action speak for itself.