Looking back: Space policy and advocacy in 2025
Sarah Al-Ahmed: A year of historic threats, unprecedented advocacy and a reminder that the future of space exploration is something we have to fight for, this week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. 2025 was one of the most consequential years for US space policy and modern history. The White House proposed the largest single year cut to NASA in the agency's lifetime, nearly having NASA's science budget. Dozens of active missions were suddenly on the chopping block. Entire scientific fields were put at risk and the future of US leadership in space science was thrown into uncertainty. But what happened next tells a very different story.
This week, we're looking back at a year that galvanized the global space community. I'm joined by Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society's chief of Space Policy, Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations and Ari Koeppel, our first ever AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow. They'll break down what actually happened behind the scenes in Washington, DC, how Congress responded to these threats to NASA Science and why public advocacy played such a critical role in pushing back against these cuts. We'll talk about the unprecedented scale of this year's advocacy efforts, how a three-person policy team helps shift the national conversation and what comes next as NASA faces continuing uncertainty headed into 2026.
Plus, in our What's Up segment, Bruce Betts, our chief scientists and I, are going to reflect on the impact that these kind of cuts can have in the long term and why we at The Planetary Society will never, never stop fighting for the future of space science and exploration. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries and the forces that shape them, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it.
This wasn't just another tough budget year. We've seen some hard times in the past, but this was something else. The proposed cuts to NASA Science were the largest ever suggested, 47%. Basically, an extinction level event for NASA Science, as Casey called it. These proposed cuts came with extraordinary uncertainty about whether even under a continuing resolution, NASA would actually be allowed to spend the money Congress approved. For the space science community, 2025 felt less like a policy debate and more like an existential moment.
That's why at the end of this year, we're doing something a little different. Normally, we wrap things up with a single episode looking back at everything that happened across space exploration. But because this year was so pivotal in the fight to save NASA Science, I decided to split that reflection in two. This episode focuses entirely on space policy and advocacy. And next week, we're going to be looking back at what humanity actually accomplished in space exploration in 2025. This conversation also comes at a key moment for NASA itself.
Literally, as we were recording this conversation, the agency finally gained a confirmed administrator after months of leadership uncertainty, adding yet another layer to an already turbulent year. So I started our conversation by asking a simple but essential question. What made 2025 so difficult and why did it demand such an extraordinary response from advocates, scientists and space fans around the world? Here's my conversation with our space policy team, including Casey Dreier, our chief of space policy, Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations and Dr. Ari Koeppel, AAAS Science and Technology Policy fellow here at The Planetary Society. Hey, everyone. Happy almost end of the year.
Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah. Happy end to 2025. Is anyone else limping across the finish line-
Sarah Al-Ahmed: Oh, gosh, so much.
Jack Kiraly: ... [inaudible 00:04:16] this year? Absolutely. It's been a bit of a busy year for us.
Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's been a very interesting time in funding for NASA. Just all the things that have happened this year have really put a lot of pressure on this team, but also this has been our absolute moment to shine. This is the reason why our organization was created. And watching all of you work together, both you, Jack, and Casey, but then also the addition of Ari to our team has been absolutely inspiring this year. And of all the people that I know in this world right now, I'm just so pleased and proud to know you guys after seeing what's happened this year.
Ari Koeppel: Let me just say I'm also very proud to be the addition next to these two guys, learning every day something new about space advocacy, learning new skills. It's been just an exceptional journey even in these first few months of working with them.
Sarah Al-Ahmed: Also, it's been wonderful seeing you join the team and get to go on these adventures, but also the expertise that you've brought in with your background. So I don't know. The fact that all of you guys have been working together, how much we've gotten accomplished together, the fact that we've had to spin off a new planetary society, the office in DC in order to back up all these efforts, it's just been a banner year for space policy, which is why we don't usually do an extra show just on space policy at the end of the year, but if we were ever going to do it, 2025 would be the moment.
Casey Dreier: I've been ... I mean, obviously, just extraordinarily proud of the work that we've done, but I also want to highlight just the work that our members have done and the wildly committed engagement that they've had on this issue. Jack can go through some of the numbers, but our members and support has really stepped up this year too. And as most of them know, we aren't anything without them. They enable us to exist in many different ways, but it was extraordinary and frankly, just really inspiring for us and really helpful during some of those longer slogs when we'd get a nice email or we'd go to do the Day of Action and see them and see that energy and commitment to be there and to be part of this. It was also truly extraordinary.
Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, we've been covering this ongoing saga for an entire year, but some people may have missed some of the things that have happened in space policy this year. So just to give some context, what made this year so difficult for the space policy community and just for NASA budgeting in general?
Casey Dreier: Well, I think the largest single year cuts ever proposed to NASA and NASA Science, that's the core, mixed with, I'd say, aggressive effort to call the number of people working at NASA and to radically change how a lot of NASA works very quickly with no engagement to the community and no broader, clear strategy. And so it really threw the workforce for a loop, it threw scientists for a loop, but also just that they were watching the potential future and we were watching our potential future of scientific exploration, but even missions, the Artemis side say was questionable there for a while after the landing, potentially just disappear. And that is a reminder. In some ways, it shook us out of maybe some complacency that this stuff just happens, it doesn't, and we really reminded about why we care about this, the unifying activity of the exploration of space that we do together that elevates our highest values and gives us access to ...
I always say, "What other government agency gives us access to the sublime?" right? It's a pretty rare thing, but also so many other benefits as well. And that core though of willing to destroy, I think, so much and also to see it not implemented, there wasn't any broader strategy or policy goal. This was different factions of this administration doing their own thing, and frankly, undermining even the administration's own stated goals. And so really trying to clarify and remind everyone, this is why we do it. But I'd say we're still in a significant era of uncertainty with this, but we're in a much stronger position now than we were at the beginning of the year.
Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. We went to Washington, D.C. for our first Day of Action earlier this year. And at the time, Casey, you and I did a show in Washington, DC called The Future of Space Policy. And at that time, we had gotten some inklings of what was coming down the pipeline here, but we hadn't actually seen what was the official presidential budget request. And then in the context of that, I remember people being very skeptical that any of those cuts were actually going to go through. And even myself, it didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense that the administration that in its previous iteration had created the Artemis program also within the Office of Management and Budget had these forces trying to make all these cuts.
So I understood people's skepticism, but once it became apparent that this was actually the situation we were grappling with, it was really inspiring to see the way that the space community rallied to come together for this, but not just the space community, the reaction from Congress and I think this is a really big win and a testament to just the power of space advocacy, was the fact that we managed to get both the Senate and the House of Representatives to boldly reject these cuts. How did that go down from your perspective, Jack, being in Washington, DC? What was it like on the ground during all of that?
Jack Kiraly: Well, there was a lot of talk early on in the process, and even around our Day of Action in March when we still had yet ... There was a significant leak that happened of some draft documents in the spring that, again, I think confirmed what at the time was a rumor, but there was still a lot of, "Well, don't worry. This is not going to happen. There's no way that they would propose as significant a cut." And that disbelief eventually turned into maybe a bit of belief once we saw the writing pen to paper of what the OMB was proposing. And this is a testament to the fact that Congress, that we have over the last 60 years, built a brand.
NASA has built a brand that is supported by a wide swath of Congress and that this is something that is so deeply popular among the American people, among the electorate, that when push came to shove and they were trying to push through these cuts and there was all this talk of, "We're going to implement the PBR regardless of what Congress says," that Congress responded fully and said, "No, you are not going to do this," and pushed back both publicly and behind the scenes. And that was in large part because of the advocacy that people did, right? Congress responds to the messages and the phone calls they get.
Maybe when you get a automated reply that is a generic, maybe milk-toast response of like, "Oh, well, I support NASA, but there are so many other issues that my office is working for. Thank you for your no," it can feel like that was the end of the engagement, but know that behind the scenes, members of Congress, hundreds of them signed onto letters and sent messages and were part of this effort to respond to what was an existential crisis for the National Space Program. And that was in part because of that coalition of support that has been built up over those 60 years that I mentioned, but also a huge part of it was the fact that you wrote to them and said that this is important to you, a constituent of theirs and the opportunities that were presented to them, they took full advantage of.
Ari Koeppel: As someone who has entered this policy and advocacy world fairly recently, I came from a background of the average person in my understanding of congressional engagement. I was sending letters to Congress, calling congressional offices and often getting those messages back saying, "Thanks for your input. We're considering it," and that was it. And so it was fairly opaque for me coming from that side of things. But now that I've been in DC working with congressional offices, meeting congressional staffers, I'm hearing from these staffers, "Hey, we've heard from your members and it's really pushing us to think more critically about this issue. How can we help make this more at the forefront of the discussion?"
Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, the reaction from our members and from space fans, not just in the United States, but around the world was very inspiring, but also just a huge amount of people got involved in this, right? So much so that we decided to spin off a second Day of Action, which is not something that we usually do. And it just happened to be through great timing and planning on the staff's part, but also by accident, happened during a government shutdown.
Casey Dreier: That was not good plan.
Sarah Al-Ahmed: That was not.
Casey Dreier: I would've rather had the government open personally. I still blame Jack for this entire successful endeavor.
Jack Kiraly: Absolutely. I will take the blame for that one. I was the one who opened my mouth. Maybe we met, what was it, July 23rd or something, and we were like, "What if we did another Day of Action?"
Casey Dreier: Yeah.
Jack Kiraly: It's my idea.
Casey Dreier: Yeah, so we can blame Jack for all of that success. And then the government shut down, which just makes things complicated at best. But yeah, obviously it turned out to be from that idle thought that condemned us all to that amount of work, we resulted in, again, arguably, it's hard to prove this with, because there's no real records for this, but I'd say arguably the largest single day of advocacy on Capitol Hill for space science in history. You could not find probably a bigger group dedicated to that topic going out through Congress where we had this amazing press conference right in front of the Capitol with a member of Congress there on the appropriations committee from Maryland, Glenn Ivey.
We had Bill was showing up on cable TV and national TV. I was doing interviews. We met with Chuck Schumer. We met with ... How many offices did all of our members meet with that day? 200-
Jack Kiraly: 454.
Casey Dreier: 54? Just a spectacular outcome and 20 ... Jack should go through it, because again, it's his fault that we did this great thing, but just a spectacular turnout. And again, I think just goes to show that people cared about this and were willing and came on their own dime, on their own dime and on their own time to participate with us.
Jack Kiraly: And we didn't do it alone, right? That was another unique element of this. Not only this is the first time we've ever done a second Day of Action in a single year, but we also did it with 19 other space organizations representing academia, the commercial space sector, labor unions, nonprofit organizations, professional societies, really representing every facet of the space community as wide a net as
