Space Policy Edition: NASA’s 2026 budget
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Hi, and welcome to this month's Space Policy edition of Planetary Radio. I am Casey Dreyer, the Chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. And I should say this is actually not this month's standard episode. This is a special episode devoted exclusively to the train wreck masquerading as the fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA that was dropped.

Just as I record this over a month ago, the full details. You may know some of the details what's in this budget. You may be learning about them for the first time. But I wanted to devote an entire special episode of the Space Policy Edition just to what is in here and how to read and interpret some of what's going on. The 2026 budget request, the full details, the full grisly details were released on May 30th.

We knew already that NASA was going to be cut by about 25%, and that science within NASA was going to be cut by 47%. Both of those already we knew were historic levels of cuts. This is unprecedented.

Additionally, what we learned from the full details of this budget is some of the new initiatives directing human spaceflight exploration towards Mars, while at the same time undermining some of the very technologies, infrastructure, and capabilities necessary to get them there. And by being so profoundly divisive, and by effectively not even publicly talking about this budget,

NASA itself and the administration that has proposing this radical change to NASA is avoiding any level of strategic implementation and strategic focus, creating the opposite, in a sense, of a foundation to build on when it inevitably must pass forward these plans to the next administration. Instead, this budget is an anti-strategy or an un-strategic budget.

This budget is also profoundly wasteful, even though it pertains to save money by cutting spending. It does so at the expense of well-performing capabilities, well-performing spacecraft, and by literally throwing away and turning off perfectly well-functioning systems that would require billions of dollars to restore. This is an unstrategic,

wasteful, and unprecedented budget proposal for NASA. None of these three words are hyperbole. These are the most dispassionate ways, I think, to express just how radical this budget is.

And it's not just me that shares the concerns for this. It's not just the Planetary Society that is pushing back on this. So to acknowledge this, and I think to bring in a wider range of perspectives, we invited two guests on the show to join me and my colleague, Jack Corrali, who is our Director of Government Relations. Joining me this episode is Alicia Brown.

She is the executive director of the Commercial Space Federation, which represents and looks out for the interests of the commercial new space companies currently really, you know, defining this future era of space that we're in. She is a veteran space policy and legislative affairs professional. She worked at NASA's legislative affairs in the past. She has worked for members of Congress and in the Senate's Commerce Committee as professional staff.

In addition to Alicia, I'm excited to welcome Brittany Webster, who is the Assistant Director of Science Policy and Government Relations for AGU, the American Geophysical Union, which represents earth scientists and planetary scientists around the country and around the globe. The AGU has been doing a lot of work and is also rallying their professional members, their professional scientists, to visit their members of Congress and push back against these cuts.

Both organizations, along with a number of many, many other organizations, are stepping up and discussing the serious issues with this proposal that we really hope will be addressed by Congress in the coming months. The 2026 budget is a lot of things, and it's not even entirely bad. Even the better ideas that it has, though, it self-sabotages.

And this is why it's so important, I think, to talk plainly and honestly about what this budget does. That even if one agrees with the deprioritization of space science, or cutting aeronautics by a third, or cutting space technology by half, or removing all of NASA's outreach and educational funding, reducing NASA's civil servant staff to the lowest levels since 1960 fiscal year.

before the first human had flown into space. Even if you agree with all of those cuts and agree with the proposal to shift the energy of the human spaceflight program away from the moon into Mars, you should not like this budget. Because at the end of the day, by making no effort to sell this, to create a coalition, to create consensus about what it's doing,

to make no effort to reach out to the other party or to build support from industry or academic institutions or space professional societies, it is not going to sustain itself. So the worst possible outcome of this budget would be significant destruction of well-performing, unique capabilities, particularly in space science and technology,

in order to pursue an ill-fated and short-term Mars direction that will wither in a subsequent administration, because there is no one, in a sense, to pass the baton to. This is not a good strategy. This is why it's unstrategic. This is why it's wasteful. It will result in something weaker, smaller, less capable, and possibly, and this is my broad worry, far more politically divided than

than it ever needed to be. If you want to do something about this, there are many opportunities still, particularly if you live in the United States. You can check out Brittany's organization, the American Geophysical Union, particularly if you are a member or a professional scientist. You can go to the Planetary Society at planetary.org and you will find a number of actions you can take right now to speak up and to push back and to share your concern about this direction for NASA to your elected officials.

This is possibly one of the most impactful moments that NASA is facing in its existence, and a time where if you have never taken action, or if you are on the fence about whether it's time to do something, this is the time to do something.

And now let's welcome our guests and we will go into the details of NASA's fiscal year 2026 budget. You can find it at nasa.gov slash budget if you want to follow along and look at all of the details with us or go to planetary.org, save NASA science, and you can see some of the details, charts, plots, context, everything there. Here we go.

I am here with my all-star cast of space policy experts, Alicia Brown from CSF, Jack, my colleague from the Planetary Society, Brittany Webster from the American Geophysical Union. Thank you all for being with me today on the special edition of the Space Policy Edition.

Thanks. Great to see you and great to be here. Thanks for all the love. Okay. Well, this is all about the fiscal year 2026 budget or the disaster that is masquerading, I think, as a budget for NASA. And it's a broadly also National Science Foundation that Brittany will talk about a little bit.

Alicia, I want to start with you from Commercial Space Federation. What are your kind of big picture reactions to this proposal that cuts NASA by 25% and obviously cuts a lot of sub areas within it? I think the overall reaction from CSF and our members, you know, we've got 85 members that represent kind of the span of what's going on in commercial space from launch to remote sensing, you know,

There are a couple of areas in there where there are some opportunities that we see, but overall, the reaction from our members was with a 25% budget cut, we're going to be doing less overall. There's less opportunity for everyone. And I think there's a lot of concern at the cuts across each mission directorate that

within space technology, they're investing in things that commercial companies would at some point like to take over. And in other mission directorates, those are the real opportunities for them to do business and to do more science, do more exploration next year and within the next couple of years. With this level of cut, it seems like NASA's barely going to be able to keep the lights on on some of the programs they have, much less doing new exciting things.

The idea that I think that the commercial sector even is not excited about this budget kind of undermines some of that, I think, broader messaging of this, right? That it's still NASA is a really core customer for a lot of your, what do you call them, participants, members of the Commercial Space Federation, right? And sets these kind of broad goals, too, that the commercial industry then fills in and can participate in.

Yeah, the goal of a lot of our companies is to help NASA and other government customers to do really cool things, but for less money and maybe faster. They're commercial in that they're willing to invest their own company's resources into some of these projects. But ultimately, a lot of them are still interested in government customers. And you just see a lot less opportunity if you're going to make cuts of this magnitude. Yeah, I mean, just for space technology, which does this basic...

technology development, it's cut almost in half, right? It's a huge cut from that. And these are projects that a lot of it's specifically earmarked for small business contracts and support. A lot of it is to demonstrate technologies at Mars and elsewhere, right? These kind of early seed technologies to be able to enable future exploration. It's one of those things, I think the biggest one that for me out of space technology was nuclear propulsion, which...

Is one of those, you know, that's clearly a we need the public sector to invest in. Right. That that's a big, big meaty thing and could enable be transformative in the future. Right. Could enable all these other activities that undermines, I'd say, their broader goals of even sending humans to Mars in the long run.

I think that's why that was so confusing is that there's all this rhetoric about going to Mars and a lot of excitement about human missions to Mars. Even when I was on the committee and at NASA for the last 10, 15 years, we've been talking about this, but the conversation has usually been about, well, we need to make these investments in nuclear propulsion, both nuclear thermal and nuclear electric.

And we had finally kind of gotten NASA started in some of those efforts, only to now have it pulled back. It's just really confusing, I think, across the budget as to how are these, how does this plans and this budget match up with some of the goals we've laid out for ourselves?

And there's just not a lot of detail. I would also say, you know, in the exploration account where there are potentially some opportunities for commercial companies to do more if SLS and Orion are eventually retired, but there's just not a lot of details about how that's going to happen. Is it going to be a competition? I think overall, we're willing to give them a little bit of space to tell us, but it's just really unclear with what's been presented so far to the public. Yeah. Jack, what are the three words that we like to use to describe this budget?

unprecedented, unstrategic and wasteful. And I mean, Alicia, you hit a great note there in that NASA has really been working

Yeah, the better part of the last two decades on building a strategy. I mean, it's in law since I think the 05 authorization that the ultimate goal of the human program at NASA is to send humans to Mars. And it's not like this is some novel new idea. This has been on the books in Title 51 for the better part of 20 years. And

to be this unstrategic with that approach is just unprecedented and wasteful. See, there we go. I used all three of them. Yeah. You are devastating so much and then undermining even technologies the agency would actually need, like also canceling telecom spacecraft at Mars now, for example, then to have it to be so divisive, then who do you hand this off to to finish, to carry you forward? It's not even...

it doesn't even internally cohere in its devastation that it does. Yeah, I mean, I think everyone who's involved in space knows that these programs take a long time to come to fruition. It's a long time to develop new spacecraft and new launch systems. And over the past four years, when I was at NASA, we spent a lot of time laying out what are the objectives for

lunar exploration for Mars exploration and beyond, and trying to set up what's the blueprint to extend human presence throughout the solar system. And we talked a lot about keeping to the plan, sticking to the plan, no matter what the resources look like. But it feels kind of like now we're maybe throwing out that plan and haven't decided on what the new plan is yet. I'm worried that we're losing a lot of precious time. And that means that just sets us back that much further to actually extend humans into the solar system.

Brittany, what was AGU's general response to this budget? And also, your purview extends also to National Science Foundation. Were you excited about this? No. Yes, fair enough. Yeah, right. That's the easy thing to say. I think originally it's disappointment, right? But I want to pick up on something Alicia said, and I think confusing.

I think there are some stated goals the administration's talked a lot about. And then I think you see the budget across the sciences and largely it's confusing because it's unsupportive of those stated goals, you know, especially a lot of things talking about America first. And one of the places we've been first for a really long time is in science, you know, not just in space, but also just in science more generally, you know,

And then I think you have a budget that doesn't reflect that at all. And there's a lot of scaling back, a lot of pulling back for missions and really in many ways seeding that leadership, I would say, to other countries, which, you know, one of my favorite things now is talk about is leadership.

you know, at the beginning it was us and Russia, right? Like that was, that was it. Those were the space players and that's not the case anymore. And so to pull back at this moment just seems really disappointing, especially as we're hearing from members every day that I think this budget really pushes a lot of our members. And I should say each year we represent a global community of about half a million in earth and space sciences and also just allies and kind of partners, um,

A lot of them now are looking outside the U.S. for opportunities, and especially, I would say, our youngest and brightest, which is really one of my biggest concerns is the fact that, you know, the people who are the future PIs, the future innovators, those people now are, I mean, looking everywhere outside the U.S., and that includes countries that maybe we don't love so much. Yeah, it's one of those things, again, it just...

It almost, again, it doesn't make sense from a policy perspective because it's not the product of a considered policy process.

And when we know from-- so the Office of Management and Budget, the White House's accounting office, ultimately approves and helps prepare this budget proposal to Congress. This process, from everything we understand, was a uniquely centralized process. And NASA and NSF and other science organizations were just not a party to these discussions. They were effectively just given numbers.

told to do whatever to advance the president's priorities with those. And this is why it's kind of this incoherent mess, right? That it doesn't actually do what it's going to say, but it also then devastates so much in the immediate terms. One couldn't even argue that, well, it's just going to be messy until we were set on this right path. There is no real path out of here like that. That's what's almost shocking. And so it's this because it's a budget first policy process that doesn't ultimately incorporate strategic thinking.

Yeah, the process is very confusing right now, too. You know, we're normally in this posture where the president proposes and the Congress proposes, as you know, what everyone around D.C. likes to say. But it does certainly seem like the decisions have really been consolidated at OMB. And I think, you know, we've all been hearing it's very unclear. Are they going to listen to what Congress appropriates?

There's debate going on right now this afternoon in the Senate about the rescissions package and how that gets handled and how the administration responds to if that package is not passed, I think is going to be really telling for us. We're here to talk about FY26, but I think we're all also in the back of our mind concerned about what's happening with the FY25 money that's already been appropriated. Is that going to be spent how Congress...

told the agencies to spend it. And if not, that really limits our, you know, all of us as advocates, how we can get anything accomplished. Well, fundamentally, it would change the nature of our democracy, if that's the case, in the sense that if, if you don't have this kind of citizen through representation appeal to how money is spent and prioritized,

than what we're I guess we're basically making direct appeals to individuals in the royal court like in some kind of courtier system Jack how are you seeing some of this reaction on the hill to to this budget nobody's trying to sell this budget to the hill and we've heard that from

Republican offices, Democratic offices, ranging the entire ideological spectrum. This is not something that I think anybody, nobody sees this as a positive development for the space program. And even just the fact that NASA itself, the interim leadership who have, you know, in just the past few months been pretty well aligned with the administration,

Still aren't even trying to sell this budget, so they haven't even really fully convinced the people who are notionally in charge of giving Congress the deeper dive on details because there are none. Right. And so what we've heard is a lot of.

frustration and consternation about this budget. It hurts everybody and not in the, well, we all have to tighten our fiscal belt and be prepared to make cuts. This is this wanton destruction of the

the competitive edge that the nation has built up over generations of scientists and engineers and innovators and entrepreneurs and explorers is just being tossed out really on the whim of one person. And that's Russ Vogt. And so the director of the Office of Management and Budget. And so there is a lot of feeling that this is dead on arrival in Congress and

But it does, as Alicia pointed out, the president proposes this and it kicks off that process. And now we're in that period of time where the politics, the capital P politics of this is going to play out. And the House and Senate are both controlled by the Republicans.

And they are going to make their proposals over these next few weeks as soon as two weeks from now, as of recording on July 7th, when the House votes on the initial markup of their budget proposal. And so we'll see what that frustration inevitably turns into, if that really is an outright rejection or are there parts of this new budget that

People are going to take the opportunity to say, well, we do need to make changes here, here and here. But a little bit of this is happening in the dark for a lot of us. I mean, I think this is why this is unusually, if you're, for those listening, it's like this is an unusually dangerous situation for these agencies because...

I feel like in a more standard politics that we've all been, that we've all grown up in, the power really does rest with appropriators and Congress itself. And, you know, there's all these varied interests that will kind of come and react and restore a lot of these proposals. But I think more broadly, the overall politics here are so...

There's a dysfunction in Congress in passing a budget at all. And this year, Alicia, that you mentioned fiscal year 25, they didn't. They extended a full year of what's called continuing resolution. And so as a consequence of the inability of Congress to respond quickly, perhaps, you have a real situation where a lot of these guts can kind of be imposed by default. And this is why it's a particularly perilous time for this. Brittany, from AGU side of things,

How has, again, your organization been responding to this? And where do you see in terms of the congressional engagement that you've been doing? Are you optimistic that Congress is able to act or do you see these same kind of structural challenges? In many ways, right? I feel like Congress only have as much power as they decide they have. I'm always hopeful. I don't think you work in policy unless you are in many ways a blind optimist.

And that's I think it's true. I don't think anyone's happy right now with what's happening with funding, both with the grants that we know have we've seen be canceled because of executive orders. And, you know, also just the lack of information coming out of agencies, I think, has been really tough for members of Congress to.

And I think a lot of them were trying to deal with it on a case by case basis. But we know these are systemic issues that cannot be dealt with like that, especially on the scale that they were happening.

So thinking about FY25 and the situation we find ourselves in where we're worried both about FY25 and FY26 and whether FY25 cuts, I mean, the fear, right, is that the FY26 president's budget request will be enacted at the FY25 level without

without any say so from Congress. And I think a lot of agencies from what we're hearing are acting like that. And that is a major concern and something that I believe Congress is beginning to also be very concerned about as they hear about the impacts from their constituents on these cuts.

However, can Congress actually do something to make sure that that's not the case by actually passing FR26 appropriations, actually looking at the spend plans and making sure that they're appropriate and to FY25 CR marks? I'm not sure. There's a lot going on with reconciliation, with the first rescissions package we saw

You know, I'm just not sure whether Congress has I don't want to say the political maybe it is the political will to do that. I think you're highlighting a challenge here is that there's the speed of Congress and then there's the rapid speed of the administration going.

in terms of its actions, of how it's moving forward with some of these changes that are, I'd say, questionably legal and most likely will ultimately be challenged in court. This idea called impoundment, where the president claims that he doesn't have to spend money appropriated to him by Congress.

that's going to be a big challenge. But you don't, I mean, what could happen, what we're worried about is like they'll start turning off missions this year because they say they're going to cancel them next year or not pay out the contracts that they had already granted this year because they say they're going to cancel them next year. Like that throws off and it's happening faster than kind of you said Congress is able to respond given it's very, very narrow majorities in both House and Senate, but also these broader issues that they're tackling with their own capital B budget, reconciliation, taxing and spending bills.

It's this Omni crisis that I've called it, right? That if everything's on in a crisis, that it's really hard. How do you get your one thing to get the attention it needs? Cause there's 18 other things. Alicia, you had something you wanted to add to this.

Yeah, I mean, as we're discussing how Congress responds to the budget request, you know, in this political climate, the reconciliation bill I found actually to be a really interesting potential indicator that at least Chairman Cruz of the Commerce Committee used his portion of the reconciliation bill to push back on some of these cuts in the exploration sector and is trying to go ahead and pre-buy, you know, SLS and Orion and some of these other

big ticket items that were proposed to be canceled in the budget. So, I mean, that's, you know, one small indicator in Congress is 535 people who don't all think the same. But I did think that that was interesting in the context of, you know, other Republicans maybe not wanting to push back against the president. Yeah. And that creates a situation, speaking a little bit more about that reconciliation amendment, where

is it creates a situation where the fiscal strain is not so heavy on the rest of the NASA portfolio. So I know that's been a big question that we've gotten about this capital B budget is how does that additional $10 billion, that supplemental $10 billion affect the

the rest of this conversation. And it really could, you know, depending on how the Senate acts on that amendment, how the House responds to all of the Senate amendments. There certainly is the voterama, as we call it, is happening sometime soon.

How the House responds to that will also be indicative because it was not included on their side. But now that there is a potential question on the floor, how do these chambers respond to supporting NASA in that way? And then, Brittany, you made also a great point about the fact that this is a period of time normally reserved for input from the agency, right?

to the appropriators. They have budget hearings. Traditionally, by this point, NASA and NSF and all the agencies would have had their major budget hearing and the head of that agency would have gone before the committees in the House and Senate and made their pitch. For NASA and NSF, that hasn't happened because there just is no leadership, right? It's all interim for both agencies.

And so that also makes it difficult and I think compounds the frustration that appropriators are feeling towards this process in that they don't even have anybody they can ask the questions of what is the plan? And, you know, very little information coming out of the administration to even defend this budget. Again, further more variables, I think, in this this long string that, you know, this this budget is.

Set up to fail in a number of ways and legislatively, you know, it's certainly not sitting in a good position on the Hill. But that goes to the other issue, is the Hill going to have input? And how are they going to if we, in the very likely, almost certain event that we have a short-term continuing resolution for the first part of FY26,

How does the administration approach that? Do we maintain that sort of decorum, the sort of unwritten rules of, well, you are keeping funding at the previously enacted levels, so we're going to spend at those previously enacted levels? Or are they going to try something new?

And try to impound funds or keep keep, you know, cancel contracts and grants and awards can't come back from stuff you can't come back from, you know, turning off a spacecraft that's a billion miles away. You can't just flip the switch again and get that thing back.

So let's talk a little bit. We kind of dancing around the exploration, human exploration side of NASA's budget. So let's focus on that for a few minutes and then we'll switch to the other big one, science. But for human exploration, the 26 budget proposes this is the one area where there's a plus sign, a positive growth sign of about six hundred million dollars compared to the prior year.

I'd say it does a few very big things. It proposes to end the Space Launch System rocket. It proposes to end the Orion crew vehicle. And it proposes roughly a billion dollars of money directed towards a some sort of Mars, human Mars exploration initiative.

Kind of, Alicia, going back to some of your issues you raised, the lack of details in some of those Mars exploration initiatives are somewhat shocking to me as someone who reads budgets over the years. There's literally multiple lines of like Mars technology budget, 300 million, 350 million. And it says, we'll figure out, literally this says, we'll figure out what this says and we will brief Congress when appropriate. So where does that money come from? What's it going to be used for? Is it enough for what they need it for? Yeah. And while it looks...

Good that there's an increase to exploration. You know, I want to point out that they're moving clips out of science and exploration. They're apparently moving vision surface power, which is for Artemis out of STND space technology to exploration. And you have to consider too, I don't see the numbers in the budget that they presented, but there should be termination liability costs if they are going to cancel some of these big contracts.

Not sure how much that is. So while maybe the number looks good, it's not clear to me that there is actually a big increase for exploration. And like we keep saying, there's not a lot of details yet on the plan for, okay, how are we going to move to some commercial systems?

Like I said, I think some of our members are really excited about potentially stepping in to offer solutions for lunar and Mars exploration, but they haven't really laid out the plan of how we're going to get there and procure those systems. Yeah. Talk a little bit about termination liability, because I think this is, it sounds like probably the most boring topic, but it's really interesting. It's really relevant in that, you know, you have these big contracts with Boeing and Lockheed and Northrop and others to build these systems, right?

And there's something in the contract saying if NASA wants to end these prematurely, it's not going to be free, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm not an expert and I don't know how much it is in each contract, but exactly right. You've, the government is essentially guaranteed to these companies under the cost plus type contracts, you know, that we're developing along with industry that, you know, we're, we're going to be with you and we're going to buy these systems. But if we decide not to, well, then we actually owe you money. And it's not an insignificant amount of money in many cases. I mean, considering that these are billions and billion dollar programs, you

You know, I'm wondering, are we really saving all that much money by canceling these programs in the future? It's not, again, it's just not really clear in this budget what is going to be available to then transition to new commercial systems. And I think the key here, too, is that a lot of these savings are in the future. So, you know, this budget proposes to end SLS development, but still fly SLS for Artemis 2 and 3 effectively.

still fly Orion for Artemis two and three. And so your real savings don't really show up until fiscal year 2028, which is basically the last year of this administration, right? Or the one of the last years of the administration in fiscal year 29. So, you know, you're not actually shifting this big pot of money towards these new commercial programs for Moon and Mars till years down the road.

And you can only then do so much in the meantime about spinning up these new projects, right? The things that it does cancel is this block 1B upgrade for SLS and the mobile launch tower, both of which I'd say are probably more along the lines of the more reasonable policy decisions that you could see from any administration coming in. Those are both significant amounts of money for sure. Yeah, I think around a half a billion dollars-ish a year. That's where most of that money is being put towards Mars in this budget.

In addition to this, there's this proposal for a moon to Mars transportation program from commercial providers. And I'd say that's an interesting idea, but also there's not that many providers that can actually provide those services at the moment, right? It would basically be SpaceX and Blue Origin, maybe someone else, but...

But also, neither of those can actually do it now. They're both working, you know, systems and development. And we require those to then be available for any kind of Mars budget. Brittany, is there anything on the exploration side that you or AGU noted? Or are you mainly focused on the science side?

I think we're mainly focused on the science side and especially the connection, I would say, heliophysics, thinking about the cancellation of Helioswarm. And I'm very confused how we're doing space exploration or I'll see. It seems counterintuitive if our focus is human exploration to be canceling a mission like Helioswarm within heliophysics, which is specifically designed to study the space environment that, you know, we hope to have astronauts in, which I think is like,

our most important asset, right? If we're launching humans to Mars, if we hope to further human exploration, I imagine even beyond that at some point.

we need to know so much more about our space environment we just we don't know enough not yet and i would also add that to mars itself it cancels mars odyssey maven at mars and also mars sample return and you know jack and i always kind of a bit baffled at that as well because oh they'll just say astronauts will pick up rocks and bring them back why do we need sample return to do that but then sample returns cancelled because it's too expensive and too complex and

I have not seen-- Alicia, you've looked at NASA, worked at NASA over the years. Has any project been made easier or cheaper when you add humans into that mix of taking them into space? That generally doesn't happen, right?

Yeah, this has been part of my frustration about discussing the human mission to Mars as we've been talking on the last six months is no one is talking about how difficult it is. And Brittany points out some of the key issues that we haven't figured out. The galactic radiation and particles coming out of the sun all pose real threats to human health. And we...

we haven't closed, I think the case yet of how we would totally, how we would get humans there, how they would survive on the surface and how we get them back. You know, I don't think that the average lay person realizes that, you know, when we speak about a mission to Mars, we're talking about at least, I think, what is it? A six or seven month journey there. One way. Yeah. Yeah. One way. And then depending on how the plants are aligned, you know, it depends on, and that's how long you have to stay on the surface. It's,

It's certainly no small undertaking. And why, as to go back to where we were at the beginning, we've been talking about investing in nuclear propulsion technologies that could hopefully get us there a bit faster than chemical rockets and therefore lessen the impact on human health. But

Yeah, there's so many long holes in technology that we need to figure out before we can safely send a human to Mars, especially if we want those humans to come back alive. Right. Yeah, that's the key element, right? I would say that should be a top priority. I don't think that should be controversial to say it's a top priority. Well, that's why it tends to be more expensive and complex because you do robotic spacecraft. You don't want to lose them. But if you do, OK, you can build another one. It doesn't work that way with humans.

Something else I noticed from this budget along the same lines is the idea that they're going to... It's really, to me, you read this budget. The idea of anything after Artemis III at the moon really becomes a hand-wavy affair. And...

That was kind of shocking to me, because you would see previously in these other budget projections-- Artemis IV, Artemis V-- this continuous US presence at the moon. And they don't say they're not doing that, but clearly the shift in this budget is to say, no, now we transition to Mars. And Artemis, therefore, becomes the boots and flag thing that it was always designed not to be. So you can pivot to this Mars thing, which as Alicia points out, is much, much harder and less likely. And I wrote a piece saying politically unstable in this kind of framing.

Along with that, the say is that it's going to take all these lessons from really engaging the commercial sector, which I think is those highlights opportunities, Alicia, that you mentioned from your members with these kind of Mars initiatives. But something that was interesting to me is like, we'll take the lessons from the moon and apply it to Mars. But we haven't really, we're just starting to get to the moon with our, like, we haven't really have that many lessons yet. We're figuring them out right now. And this is the...

This is the whole point of Artemis, is that we commit for this long time. What lessons do we learn? How do we work a project? So they propose a Mars payload delivery project modeled after Eclipse, the one at the moon, but propose less money for that than the one at the moon. Does that make sense to your members, that you would have less money to go 100 million miles further than the moon to deliver these types of payloads? That doesn't add up to me.

Yeah, I mean, I will say I think doing a commercial Mars program is like a really good precursor for human missions. I think there are a lot of companies who, you know, could do Mars orbiters, and we could probably do some cool heliophysics or astrophysics missions on commercial platforms, you know, sending them towards Mars.

But there's, you know, for the last since, you know, Bridenstine rolled out Artemis, there's a huge coalition of companies working on moon technologies. And I just wonder what happens to this kind of burgeoning space economy if NASA is going to turn away from the moon. And then, of course, also there's the geopolitical context, which is really why, you know, one of the big reasons why Congress is so bought into lunar exploration is.

is that China and its partners are also planning a lunar base. And what does that mean if they're there and can establish the norms and carve out territory for themselves and NASA isn't there? And as we've said, Mars, we expect that to take a lot longer. Well, what are we going to be doing if we're de-orbiting ISS or potentially walking away from the moon to focus on some longer term Mars program? It just feels like we're going to be losing our competitive edge in many of these domains. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, the whole point of, again, Alvaro is I would imagine from, again, from the business case, if you're putting in your own money as a private company to match some NASA contribution to do a lunar access capability or provide a service, you make your money back on the back end of that contract of providing them that service for years, right? Kind of that's the model of providing cargo to the space station.

And so I would imagine this budget would actually make it a lot harder for private investors to raise money for lunar activities and cislunar economy, because is there a commitment anymore? That was the whole reason we made this long-term commitment, to provide this opportunity for these new companies to form and thrive. It's just baffling to me. It's like unlearning the lessons that the first Trump administration had made with setting this up in the first place.

We have to keep moving along. I think any other highlights from anyone else on the exploration side? I guess I should mention it cancels the Gateway Space Station, thereby screwing over our international partners, which is where all of our international commitments were. Jack, maybe just real quickly circle back to that cruise amendment, because it does undo basically this entire proposal. And just briefly again, say why this is separate from this appropriations process. JACK HARTMAN: Right. So yeah, so the reconciliation budget

That is being discussed currently is that we keep saying capital B budget that is looking at the the very large picture that's mandatory spending, taxation, tax breaks that like really, you know, the the incoming and outgoing funds of the United States does not get to the granularity of individual agencies. Right.

But what's happening now is a number of senators, and in this case, Chairman Cruz, has provided an amendment that sets aside a supplemental $9.995 billion, $10 billion, $10 billion.

specifically earmarked for these specific projects, purchasing SLS for Artemis 4 and 5, supplementing the funding for Orion crew vehicle development, funding the Lunar Gateway Space Station, as well as a number of activities, including the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. We're talking about infrastructure at Mars. This sets aside $700 million specifically for a dedicated telecommunications orbiter, a

commercially sourced telecommunications orbiter for a Mars sample return campaign, as well as future crewed missions to the planet. And so this amendment really sets aside that $10 billion in a very specific way to maintain minimum funding levels for those key projects. And it's available for 10 years, too. And it's available through September 30th, 2032. But all of it has to be obligated

by the end of fiscal year 2029. And so that's September 30th, 2029. And so all of that funding has to be obligated in some way, shape or form between now and then should this amendment become law. And so that allows the agency a little bit more flexibility in the rest of the budget to support its other activities and maintains that support for a sustainable lunar program that transitions to a Mars program along the lines of that strategy we talked about.

So it was basically rejected some of these core tenants within like four days of this budget coming out by the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee. TBD, whether that actually happens, but I thought notable and I think goes to the point that this is not being effectively sold. We'll be right back with the rest of our space policy edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

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With your support, working together, we can save the world. Thank you. Let's switch to science. Science is cut in this budget by 47%. It would lower science funding to its lowest point adjusted for inflation since 1984. It would cut some divisions more than others, including, I'd say maybe an astonishing, is the right word here, 67, 65% cut to astrophysics.

So two thirds basically of astrophysics evaporates overnight in this budget. 50-ish percent cuts to earth science, 30% cut to planetary science, heliophysics down by roughly 50%, right, Brittany? And so Brittany, from AGU, you kind of expressed this a little bit. What would you highlight as some of the most worst, the worst aspects of this that you saw? Where do we even begin with something this dramatic?

Well, I think as the Planetary Society well knows, I think the cuts to the decadal missions, right? So we have Mars sample return, we have the GDC mission in heliophysics, and then we have the cancellation of two of the Earth System Observatory missions. I think they have very scientific names on the atmosphere observing system and the surface biology and geology mission. So I think

I think, first of all, given how important the Decatur mission process is for our communities in terms of just really setting the vision right for our communities and where the innovation happens for our communities and what I think to a large degree inspires the community, but also inspires

signals that there's a future for the community and a robust future for the community. I think the cancellation of those decadal missions, I can't speak to, I'm sure there's something canceled big in astrophysics. I can't speak to that. But the cancellation of those missions, I think is the biggest red flag and concern.

But alongside that, I think it's the concern of the existing missions. The cancellation, I believe it's over 40 missions. But when you look at them, you know, director or division by division, when I look at the cancellation of the heliophysics missions, I mean, this is devastating for the community.

And, you know, I think Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the best examples, right? So they've been in existence since the 70s. They are literally still going strong, still producing science, still doing interesting things. And so many of these missions, they have second lives now too, right? They're doing new science, science that wasn't even thought about when they were conceived because of how long it takes to build a satellite. You know, we're often talking...

this is going to be conservative, but from decadal maybe, or like conception to actual being built, I imagine we're talking about at least a 10 years, 10 years. Don't I would say at least. And so I think to cancel those missions to me seems really short sighted, but also as you said earlier, it seems wasteful. Like why are we canceling good missions that are in operation that are

We've already spent billions of dollars building. And the other thing that I think is really concerning about them, there was a good Twitter thread by someone talking about how

Almost think of an ecosystem, basically, that the way these missions are used, it's not just about the one mission, it's about the constellation of missions, right? So maybe I'm doing a little bit of work from this satellite, but then I'm also using this satellite. But also think about like when satellites are built, right? Like,

You're not, you might build one satellite and then you go on to the next satellite. You're using like a shared workforce and a shared set of capabilities that people can kind of train on and move back and forth between the other. And then it benefits all these other industries too. Yeah. Basically we've created based on our scale, right? Like we have like a scale of economy here that we're able to take advantage of. And also our scientists are able to take advantage of. And I will also print out Landsat next and basically, um,

You know, Landsat Next was supposed to be this great innovation for Landsat. And I don't know if you know this, but like Landsat is the most cited or science mission, apparently. And it's the most used by other federal science partners. And so Landsat Next was supposed to be a series of satellites through satellites as opposed to the one.

And, you know, it was going to have all these innovations. So instead of a 16 day interval, they would be on a six day interval. Basically, the amount of science we were going to get out of it would be at least double.

We were going to get a lot more science out of it. And this is a mission that we know, right, based on the scientific output, the use by federal partners, it's used heavily. You've had like continuous Earth observation with those using the same types of instruments that are calibrated very carefully to match each other for over 50 years, right? Like that's a priceless data set.

It's a place of pride for a lot of people and a lot of members of Congress, too. And so Landsat Next was going to give us all these great innovations. And basically the budget's like, no, let's just build the same satellite again when we need one. So I think that's also really disappointing. And again, this kind of circles back to the workforce comment in general.

I mean, I think this is a blow to the NASA and the space science workforce. I just, the optics alone are not, I think the message it sends is almost, the optics are not great. I don't want to, I don't want to overstate, but let's say the optics are not great. And, you know, I think, you know, you guys can talk about planet science, but I think one of the best missions that to me demonstrates this is also the canceling of Veritas. Right.

like the Venus community, you know, where's their North star now? Yeah. All of Venus, like Veritas, DaVinci, and even Venus technology development, which is like 5 million a year is all excised out of this. It says Venus no longer exists in this, in this budget. And, and the contribution to the European space agencies and vision mission, which is we're providing an instrument. This is not, we're, this is not the full up. We're building the whole thing. This is, we're just providing an instrument for this.

for this platform. And even that is deemed unimportant for the only other terrestrial body in the solar system that has a thick atmosphere. Right. Those core Venus missions have just been jerked around almost since the get-go, too. It's been kind of years of, are we doing them?

Are we not doing them? Yeah. I feel so bad for the Venus community right now. The last time the US had a mission at Venus, Jack, what was that? 94 is when Magellan ended? 1994. So yeah, I think it's time to look at that planet a little bit too. Alicia, from your members, what's their reaction to the science cuts?

I mean, it's devastating, you know, and considering too that because we've been under discretionary spending caps for the past two fiscal years, 24 and 25, science was already hurting a lot. I think they lost over those two years about $10 billion or $2 billion that they had planned to spend. You know, they were already really pinching pennies and canceling missions where they could. And it's just, as you guys have said, they can't meet these numbers without turning off concurrent missions.

And so therefore, of course, there's already very few new missions. Now there's almost nothing. You know, I think the commercial community is, and I believe wholeheartedly that there are certainly ways that we could do cool, really cool, really great science for less money.

But again, there's just not this opportunity if you're making these deep of cuts. You know, and the earth science stuff is really hitting home to me right now as we're going through this crazy heat wave on the East Coast, on the Southeast. You know, NASA and NOAA are the premier science agencies that are really monitoring the earth.

NASA and NOAA put out that 2024 was the hottest year on record. If we're turning off these missions, if we aren't doing the new Earth Systems Observatory, how are we really going to know even what's happening with our home planet? Yeah. And Earth Science is a huge purchaser of commercial Earth imagery.

and observations too. Yeah, they've been kind of a really good set, a really good example, I think, for the rest of science of how you can partner and use commercial technologies to do really great science. That program that you mentioned, they buy data directly from a bunch of different companies, folks like Planet and Maxar, who have a really great revisit rates and can, you know, have really great resolution of what's going on in the earth. It's really great for the farming community. They can tell what's happening on their crops.

You know, of course, there's huge impacts to predicting weather, sea level rise, a bunch of different applications that are really important that earth science feeds into. Yeah, it's air science again, cut by I think about 53% in this and loses. You bring up this, this important thing, both of you, which is the spigot of future missions, right? That this, it takes a long time to design and build these. And then depending on where you're going, it can take a while to get there, commission it, start getting your data, right?

almost every future project is functionally canceled. There's a handful left. And so it's not only just wiping out a third of active missions, it's wiping out our future in space science. And even so then if those all end and then we restart, we basically have to start from zero. And so even to rebuild will take a decade to do that.

It's just it is not a forward looking document, which is ironic when we talk about space exploration. Right. That's the essence. Brittany, we all have to be optimists and space policy doubly so. It's like everything you always have to like point at an empty point in space and hope, you know, you trust that your calculations are right, that there'll be a planet there when your spacecraft gets there.

And it's all about this forward-looking aspect, which is just not here expressed at all. And it's in science and again, in the lack of effort to sell the Mars initiative that cannot politically last. This is a very long-term consequences from this. Brittany, from your member, a lot of your members are professional scientists. What are you hearing from them? What are the consequences that we're seeing already?

This is such an overused phrase, but we're an existential threat. I mean, I think a lot of people, I've been asking the question, how long until this really hurts? Like how long until you and your family are having to make different decisions, basically. And for a lot of people, I think it's the end of the year. But also too, I envision that this school year, we know a lot of grad students, postdocs,

either got their offers and also too, I will say just early scientists, they got their offers rescinded.

or grad students weren't, they, you know, a lot of colleges and universities, they didn't even offer positions to any grad students this year. So then I imagine your lab is now, so you're underfunded, you're understaffed as well. And we're in unprecedented times. I think a lot of them don't know what's going to happen. A lot of them are dependent on

you know, NASA grants and we could talk about roses as well and how delayed that has been, but also then with NSF pulling back with DOE office of science, pulling back grants, we're in a really difficult position right now where I think, um,

a lot of professors are going to have to make really tough decisions soon. And perhaps then we have scientists, you know, who are only working part time. Or not at all. Or just leave the field altogether. Leave the field altogether, because I just don't see how some of them will be able to support themselves, to be quite frank. One of the numbers that really stuck out to me in the NSLF budget was that they envision their students

grant acceptance rate going down from 26%, which already that's pretty low to 7%, 6%. You know, one out of every 20 applications will get funded. So either now I'm a researcher spending all of my time writing grant proposals or

Just to get like that one, right? Like I'm submitting a hundred to hopefully get one or I'm, you know, really having to scale back. As you say, like leaving the field or maybe just becoming like a part-time scientist or moving to another country. I think we all saw, I can't remember exactly,

I know it was Europe. I can't remember if it was like the EU itself or a country in Europe who put out a call. They set aside a certain amount of money and it was France and then asked other scientists from the US, like, are you interested in coming? And they said they had to shut it down because they got too many requests and proposals. If I remember correctly, it was also, it wasn't just funding for, oh, maybe the next year or the next five years. It was 20 years of committed funding.

for those folks to move. And this is a national asset, right? These are the best and brightest minds that help innovate, that come up with new ideas, that change our concepts of our place in space, of the way our planet operates, the environment in space, and these places beyond here. And that all has benefits here, right? As technology spinoffs and applications here terrestrially here on Earth,

and it's a national asset right we're known the world over that's why we have so many people that move here to be part of the science community because it's

the best in the world. But this turns off that spigot and says, this is actually is unimportant to us when it just is undoing this foundation of what modern life has become. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, this has been U.S. policy since Vannevar Bush and Endless Frontier. And, you know, all of us have been in the science policy world for a while and seen the economic studies and, you know, all the different spinoffs and technology that come out of NSF.

And Google, I think, started at NSF CRISPR. A ton of these. It's amazing, I guess, that France has taken note and learned these lessons where current policymakers maybe haven't. Yeah. I mean, the whole post-war...

was realizing that science is a key aspect of national security and thriving. And that's why it is a role and needs to be funded by the public to some degree, because it enables this long-term security through workforce capability and just cutting edge. Again, like you want the talent and the minds. So this turns off the spigot, because I'll point out too, so there's a lot of fundamental grants for scientists that roses as a version of a way that scientists can apply to a grant application area.

But a lot of this funding is cut by a third or half or even two thirds in some cases. So it's just no money to support the active science, even of the data that has come back from these missions. We lose missions like Juno at Jupiter, New Horizons in the Kuiper Belt. We lose missions like Chandra in orbit, X-ray Space Telescope. These are irreplaceable assets where to replace them would cost billions.

What they do retain even, they cut the operating funding for. And so James Webb Space Telescope loses a third of its budget for science. That's what it's there for. It just will do days without science. Mars Perseverance loses almost 20% of its operating budget. That's two days a week, basically. Now it'll sit on the surface of Mars, not able to operate because you're paying engineers and people to run it. So again, it's complete walking away from not only our commitments, but the future of this. It's hard to express anything.

Hyperbole is actually failing us in some ways. It sounds like hyperbole in some ways, but this is probably the most dispassionate way we can talk about this.

Very quickly, let's talk science in another area on the International Space Station. It's set to be deorbited around 2030. This was prior presidential policy as well. But this budget takes away a third of operating funds for the International Space Station, severely reduces the number of astronauts that can go on board, severely reduces the number of cargo, the amount of cargo that can go up, and it cuts functionally all scientific research, both on the

ISS research time, the time that astronauts spend doing it, but also on the microgravity biological research side of the science community that creates the experiments themselves. Alicia, did you want to quickly talk about the ISS changes that you're looking at? Yeah, I mean, the

Just like in science, in the current operating science missions, it just makes no sense to me. The taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to create this fantastic orbital microgravity laboratory. It's obviously not going to last forever. We're preparing for the commercial space stations that will follow on. But, I mean, number one, we really need the research to keep going on stations so that there is, you know, a clear pathway to transition activity from ISS to commercial stations.

But also, I mean, why did we spend all this money as a country to invest in this laboratory if we aren't going to use it to the fullest extent possible to into its full capacity for as long as it's actually flying? It just it makes no sense to me. And I mean, reducing crew up there like we're going to literally just be in station keeping and not doing any research. Like what's what's really the point of that? That I keep saying it's without science. It's a national laboratory.

without science to do stuff up there, you have literally nothing to do except to fix things, you know, to fix the toilet basically, right? Like, why are we sending astronauts there just to float around in space? It's not their favorite thing to do, fun station. Yeah, I mean, they... Right, exactly. I mean, you need to fix things, but if there's nothing to... No larger purpose, they're just...

being there to be there becomes like this existential crisis of why are we even doing that? And I would even argue probably all of these kind of things start to undermine this public investment of why are we doing this? They're not doing science in space. What are they doing to begin with? What are we going to Mars for? There's no explanation. We're cutting back on the science, which people say that they want NASA to do.

It starts to create the separation between what the space program does and what the public expects of it. Brittany, do you have any thoughts on the ISS and microgravity communities as well? So not a lot, but I just want to kind of pick up on what you said and maybe say that like definitely just maybe a little more explicitly. But I think it gets lost sometimes when we talk about human exploration, that the point of exploring more planets is,

is in many ways to do more science, to do more interesting science, to do more hands-on science, right? Science that robots can't do. Probably more experiments on human health, you know, and the impacts on how do we improve human health. And just that we're continuing again to see benefits on this. And if we're going to Mars...

Again, it also seems like a loss of opportunity to continue doing research, especially on human health in space, because, you know, I just I feel the general public does not know enough how many gaps there are still between our knowledge and how we can safely explore deeper and longer in space.

Yeah, absolutely. Other quick hits here, STEM education, NASA's outreach and space grant support zeroed out completely. We've also seen third cuts to overhead and operations, which basically translate to roughly losing a third of NASA's remaining civil servant workforce, which reduces NASA's workforce to its smallest level since fiscal year 1960, which began in 1959. So, I mean, even talking about this broad conflicts of incoherency,

going to the moon and then going to Mars with the workforce you had when you started Project Mercury. Again, that just doesn't check out at all in terms of how this can work. In the last few minutes here, Alicia, I'll start with you. From Commercial Space Federation's perspective, where are you moving from this and how can people follow what Commercial Space Federation is doing?

Yeah, thanks for that. So you can follow us on X and on LinkedIn at the Commercial Space Federation. If you are a commercial space company and are interested in joining us and our policy and advocacy work in D.C., please feel free to reach out on our website. NASA is just one area that we're focused on. There are cuts happening at NOAA, at the Office of Space Commerce and Department of Defense that we're worried about as well. And we're going to be doing a lot of work on that.

And we're also doing some work with the FAA to try to reform space launch and reentry regulations. So a ton going on in our world right now that we're focused on. But, you know, NASA is something that I think is a crown jewel of our country. And it's, you know, all

Many, many of the companies that are part of our coalition want to do work with NASA. And so we're just trying to get, like you guys are, you know, the word about what are the opportunities that we're losing here? And what does that impact mean for the U.S. economy and for U.S. global leadership as a whole? Well said, Brittany. What is AGU doing and how can people follow or even help? Yeah.

So I would say you can follow us on all the social media things. If you follow us on Blue Sky or X, we're at AGU SciPolicy and our email address is sciencepolicy at AGU.org. If you want to email us, we're always happy to take emails and we're always looking for partners, scientists, researchers, students who are interested in engaging with us. We are a member society, so we have a very active grassroots program and

And right now, our biggest thing is members of Congress are going to be back home in the district in August. So we're organizing congressional meetings, but we're also doing a big op-ed campaign. There's a lot of, I think, public engagement opportunities, right? Does the public really know why these missions are important? Not just because I think they inspire us all and also just kind of

They're all inspiring. I want to say awesome, but that sounds too terrible. Awesome in the literal sense, right? Yes. Awesome in the literal sense. The traditional definition of the original sense. It's not just that, right? It's also thinking about earth science and thinking about, I'm sure with the heat waves, also the air quality today does not feel great to me personally, but also thinking about natural disasters. I always think that

I found myself in a couple of natural disasters. And the fact that I know we have this whole arsenal of government agencies working together to kind of problem solve and get information, you know, literally in your hands, in your cell phone quickly, that's when you need it more than ever. And maybe you don't realize how important it is until you find yourself in that situation. And so we're going to be doing an op-ed letter to the editor campaign in August, really highlighting kind of what these cuts mean, not just to science, but to society as well.

And we're always looking for people to engage with us.

Great. Thank you, Brittany. And for us at the Planetary Society, we have our Save NASA Science campaign. We have an action hub at planetary.org slash save hyphen NASA hyphen science. You can also access it from our homepage. I want to thank you both for being part of this discussion and for your friendship and partnership throughout this entire process. Over the next few months, I very much look forward to working with both of you. And I know Casey does as well.

Thanks. Thanks, Jack. Thanks, Casey. Thanks all. We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. But we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies and ideas that power space science and exploration.

Help others in the meantime learn more about space policy and the Planetary Society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show. Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and that will help them find their place in space through Planetary Radio.

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