The Planetary Society

Do you still have questions about the OMB's proposed rule? This month's episode of Space Policy Edition podcast with Casey Dreier features Elizabeth Ginexi, and they work through the proposed rules changes to federal grantmaking that would suppress, isolate, and set back American science.

Listen here:

Space Policy Edition: A proposal to stifle American science Casey Dreier is joined by Liz Ginexi, a former Program Officer at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, to break down a 400-page proposed rule change…

We've created a simple guide for the professional scientific community on how OMB's proposed grant-making rules affect your work. These rules would give political appointees control over grant funding decisions, reduce peer review to advisory status only, and allow active grants to be terminated without justification.

Access it herehttps://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/pdfs/omb-grant-making-rule-changes-overview-2026-06-02.pdf

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget just proposed new rules that would let political appointees, not scientists, decide which research gets funded in the United States.

Under these rules, a senior political official would have to personally approve every single federal grant before it goes out.

Peer review, which has been the gold standard for evaluating science on merit, would be reduced to just a suggestion. And if your research falls out of political favor? Any active grant can be revoked at any time, with no explanation required.

We're talking about NASA grants, NSF grants, the funding that powers discoveries about our Universe and our planet. This rule was not written by NASA's leadership, and it works against the agency's own exploration goals for the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The rules would also ban entire categories of research outright, and cut off collaboration with scientists from other countries, even if those researchers live in the U.S.

Researchers wouldn't even be able to use grant money to publish their findings or attend scientific conferences without getting special permission first.

This affects everyone from PhD students to career scientists to all of us whose lives improve because of federally funded research.

The public comment period is open right now, but this time,
we're not asking you to sign a form letter. We need your actual words, your story, to make a difference. Identical submissions get counted as a single comment, so the more you write, the less OMB can ignore us.

We cannot stress how dangerous this rule would be if enacted.
But we can stop this if enough people submit their personal story of why peer-reviewed science is important.

The deadline to submit comments is July 13th.

Advocacy Action Center The Planetary Society is organizing a new space constituency that is educated, empowered, and loud.

Goodnight, MAVEN.

Mars once had an atmosphere thick enough to hold liquid water on its surface. MAVEN spent 11 years figuring out what happened to it.

Launched in 2013, it studied how the Sun slowly stripped the Martian atmosphere away over billions of years, turning a potentially habitable world into the cold, arid planet we see today. It discovered new types of auroras, watched a global dust storm loft water into space in real time, produced over 800 scientific publications, and it held the Solar System record for most data relayed from another planet in a single day. It was only supposed to last 1 year, it completed a decade more.

On December 6, MAVEN passed behind Mars and went silent. Telemetry before the pass showed everything working normally. When it emerged, NASA's Deep Space Network picked up nothing. A fragment of radio data revealed the spacecraft had entered safe mode and was spinning at an unusually high rate, likely from an orbital disruption. The batteries likely drained and the communications system lost power. An anomaly review board determined it could not be recovered.

NASA confirmed today the mission has ended. Thank you to the MAVEN team for years of science.

That'll do, MAVEN, that'll do.

1️⃣: Artist concept of MAVEN at Mars.
NASA / GSFC

2️⃣: Ben Cooper was one of a few members of the media privileged to visit the MAVEN Mars orbiter in the clean room at Kennedy Space Center as it underwent its final preparations for launch to Mars.
Credit: Ben Cooper

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a major reorganization of NASA. Learn more about what that looks like ⬇️

Save NASA Science Action Hub Updates and actions on the proposed cuts to NASA science in FY 2027.

It was a beautiful day in Washington, D.C. for The Planetary Society's annual board of directors meeting — and we've got a lot of work to do. Let's inspire the world to advance space science and exploration!

Left to right:
Newton Campbell Jr.
Vice President, Heidi Hammel
Britney Schmidt
Treasurer, Lon Levin
President, Bethany Ehlmann
Jim Bell
Chairman, Dan Geraci
Dipak Srinivasan
CEO, Jennifer Vaughn

Our new CEO, Jenn Vaughn, is traveling the country to meet with Planetary Society members!

Here's Jenn and staff members in Washington DC this past week members where inspiring stories were shared about their passion for space exploration as well as learning about the Society's new strategic vision -- Together, We Explore.

📸: Brad Glazier of Glazier Photography.