The Space Advocate Newsletter, September 2026

This month

Sometimes, preserving funding for science isn’t enough.

Though NASA was spared the worst of the cuts proposed over the last two years, the agency is on track to award the fewest scientific grants in 15 years.

With only two weeks to go in the U.S. government’s fiscal year, NASA has awarded ​​1,188 new grants for basic scientific research. That’s roughly 15% fewer than the historic baseline, and almost exactly equal to 2025.

This has occurred despite consistent funding provided to basic science at NASA over the past few years. The White House’s attempt to cut science funding by nearly 50% was rejected by the U.S. Congress in 2025 in a rare show of bipartisan unity, and is likely to do so again in 2026.

Impoundment, when the executive branch refuses to spend money allocated by Congress, wasn’t the problem, either. NASA duly spent the money it was directed to spend, and actually spent more in 2025 than in recent years, yet the agency ultimately supported fewer scientists. It did so by increasing the median value of each grant. This is consistent with reports of the agency “advance-funding” grants for the year ahead, simply to get money out the door before spending authority expires at the end of the fiscal year.

It’s hard to pin down any single cause for this. NASA’s reporting of its grant activities has become opaque, and key sources of information have been removed from public access.

But actions taken by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget suggest that it could be the result of new and burdensome administrative rules, the loss of NASA personnel necessary to administer the grant program (NASA’s Shared Services Center, which controls the awards, is reported to have lost upwards of a fifth of its staff in the past year), as well as the large funding cuts constantly being proposed to these programs.

I had the opportunity this month to present these results to a committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. My point was this: tracking the overall funding Congress allocates for science programs is not enough. We must look at the impact on individual scientists. In space science, we’re seeing increasing strain placed on a community with fewer opportunities to get the resources needed to study the data our spacecraft have already collected.

Until next month,

Casey Dreier
Chief of Space Policy
The Planetary Society

What I’m reading this month

House clears FY 2027 CR, now to the President (spacepolicyonline.com)
The U.S. Congress delayed final action on the 2027 NASA budget (among others), passing a continuing resolution (CR) which funds the government until December, well after the upcoming mid-term elections. This legislation also explicitly forbids the White House from implementing its proposed rule asserting partisan political control over all grant awards through this period.

Europe will go it alone on Venus mission after NASA yanks radar instrument (arstechnica.com)
Another shameful example of the U.S. breaking commitments with the European Space Agency, as NASA has all but abandoned its plans to provide the key radar instrument for the upcoming EnVision mission. Congress funded this effort in 2026, but the White House continues to request cuts to all Venus funding, and the uncertainty means that NASA can no longer guarantee the future contribution.

Rocket Lab is seeing red about NASA's decision on a Mars spacecraft (arstechnica.com)
NASA recently awarded a contract to build a dedicated Mars telecommunications relay to Blue Origin. Rocket Lab, widely understood as the instigator of this funding line, has filed an official protest for the project, which could delay the mission from its already tight 2028 launch date. NASA has not committed to adding any science instruments to this spacecraft.

America needs a Space Academy that invests in people, not buildings (spacenews.com)
What to make of the Space Academy? This op-ed argues that effort would be better spent enabling students to matriculate through existing institutions and infrastructure, instead of creating a literal physical institution.

Ground Truth

Data visualization and analysis

This chart captures the drop in new science grants awarded in fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Note both the dramatic drop from 2024 and that the inflation-adjusted amounts themselves have stayed somewhat consistent over time.