Hello and welcome to the space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio.

I'm Casey Dreyer, the chief of space policy here at the Planetary Society, welcoming you to

yet another episode that explores the policies and processes behind space exploration.

I've been trying not to get too much into the day-to-day activities of politics and policies

in this show lately.

I've been wanting the episodes to more stand on their own and be relevant for years to come,

thinking about big ideas and big thoughts in space.

But it's worth stopping for a minute at the end of this year, in December of 2025,

to reflect on what has happened, what we've done,

and to really discuss and kind of consider why we care so much about space science in the first place.

Earlier this year, we were confronted with probably the worst budget ever proposed for NASA,

certainly for NASA science.

We saw cuts upwards of 25% for the agency overall, but 50% for the science activities.

Things like the robotic missions to Pluto and Jupiter

would be terminated in mid-flight. Earth science, heliophysics, almost every space telescope

would have been turned off, except for the Hubble and James Webb. And basically, the pipeline

of future missions would dry to a trickle.

Research funding across the nation would be eviscerated,

and many other long-term and consequential impacts would have occurred from this, and still may occur.

In response, here at the Planetary Society, at least, we tore up whatever ideas we had for that year and started anew with the Save NASA Science campaign.

This was a sophisticated and very ambitious effort to provide a consistent framing, media outreach, political outreach, and organizational engagement with you, our listeners and members of the Planetary Society,

to push back in a way that would stop these cuts in their tracks.

...