Policy Update (11 March 2026)

As reported in Nature, the White House slowed funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NASA, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), likely as a tactic to “assert more control over how agencies spend their money,” per Samuel Bagenstos, a former lawyer for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) during the Biden Administration. Following the memo linked in our previous policy update, a new OMB footnote indicates that NASA is not authorized to spend money on certain programs until NASA provides OMB with a “detailed spend plan” of these programs. The ten programs listed in the footnote include the Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC), OSIRIS-APEX, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), Astrophysics Probe Program, VERITAS, DAVINCI, and Science Activation.

On 4 March, the NASA Authorization Act of 2026 passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee. The bill instructs NASA to continue development of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and continue operations of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope. You can read about selected highlights of the bill on the committee’s press release page here. This bill also includes new language mandating that the NASA Administrator enter into an agreement to conduct a mid-decadal review “not later than 5 years after the date on which each decadal survey report... is issued.”

On 6 March, AAS submitted a petition to deny SpaceX’s application to the FCC to operate a new satellite constellation of one million data centers. AAS argues that this constellation, if accepted, would affect “billions of dollars' worth of US federal investment in the astronomy research enterprise, and thereby threaten significant harm to the members of our Society.” SpaceX’s application filing received almost 1,500 comments in total.

We also submitted a petition to deny Reflect Orbital’s application to launch Earendil-1, their first demonstration satellite designed to reflect sunlight towards the ground with an 18 x 18 m reflector. The AAS states that while the Society “supports US commercial space innovation, the potential for catastrophic interference with federally funded astronomical research, in addition to potentially serious impacts to human health and the Earth’s environment, outweigh the limited experimental utility of this specific filing. The Commission has a responsibility to protect the integrity of billions of dollars in federal investment used to build and operate facilities that would be negatively impacted by this satellite.” We also signed onto a multi-organization comment in response to Reflect Orbital’s filing that voiced concerns related to wildlife and human health, as well as astronomy. In total, Reflect Orbital’s filing has received over 1,800 comments. Many of these are from members of the astronomical community.

A new national survey by Research!America reveals that over 90% of Americans support basic scientific research and over 80% of informed Americans are concerned about potential cuts to research and innovation. Americans also tend to view artificial intelligence as more of a risk to their quality of life (i.e., through job loss, loss of privacy, and abuse of data) rather than a tool that will improve their lives.

Thank you to the 200+ people who took part in our action alerts urging your House members to sign onto letters in support of NASA Science and NSF. We will report on the total number of signatories in the next policy update! In the meantime, check out our Action Center on actions you can take today in support of the astronomical sciences.

For more science policy news, check out:

• What’s Ahead: The Week of March 2, 2026 (AIP FYI)
• What’s Happening in Space Policy March 8-14, 2026 (SpacePolicyOnline)

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to [email protected]. For a chronological list of recent AAS actions and public policy updates, check out our Public Policy Updates page.