Mark Sykes's FOIA tally finds NASA research funding lost 30% of its value since 2011

NASA's research and analysis total has to be assembled by hand. R&A is not a single line item in the agency's budget or in the President's Budget Request to Congress. The money is spread through individual programs and missions ^[9]. Mark Sykes, a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, pieced it together from Freedom of Information Act records and public documents ^[8]. He added up the separate R&A contributions across Planetary Science Division programs for each of 15 years ^[9]. His evidence is therefore strongest for planetary science, which is one division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The loss is one of purchasing power. Spending stayed relatively flat in dollars ^[1] while inflation cut what it could buy ^[2]. R&A pays for openly competed proposals in basic research and data analysis, the work that most of NASA's mission and research portfolio rests on ^[4]. Both the 2011 and 2022 planetary decadal surveys asked for R&A increases slightly ahead of inflation ^[5]. The shortfall opened early. In 2013 actual spending was about 15% below the 2011 survey's recommendation ^[1], and the gap grew through the years that survey covered ^[10].

The 2023 figures need care. Congress's 10% goal is four times the 2.5% share Sykes found ^[2]. If the missing 7.5 percentage points equal about $185 million, the division budget works out to about $2.47 billion ^[3] and planetary R&A to about $62 million ^[4]. That would be roughly half the 2013 level, in a series Eos describes as relatively flat ^[1]. Either the 2023 share and gap are measured against a different base from the other years, or 2023 was a steep dip.

Sykes draws a human conclusion from the money. "The consequences are devastating," he wrote in a blog accompanying the investigation. "NASA is losing the intellectual content needed to identify and answer the breadth of significant scientific questions it is faced with today and it is losing the community of scientists (young and old) our nation needs to pursue these questions and maintain leadership in the world." ^[3] The investigation, as Eos describes it, does not include grant counts, proposal success rates or numbers of funded researchers. I think his inference is plausible for money that pays for competed research proposals ^[4]. A count of funded investigators over the same 15 years would test it directly.

FY2025 is a different kind of finding, about money budgeted and then not spent. NASA has two years to spend appropriated funds but has historically spent them by the end of the fiscal year ^[14]. "For years, money budgeted has been very close to money expensed," Sykes told Eos by email ^[13]. "I would say that the accrued costs for FY2025 reflects a de facto change in the budget by the Administration," he said ^[15]. He added that this may be one of many examples of the second Trump administration choosing not to spend funds Congress allocated to programs that do not fit its politics ^[16]. The midyear figures document a break from past practice; the motive is Sykes's interpretation. About $76 million of the FY2025 planetary R&A budget was unspent at the halfway point ^[5], and NASA's two-year window means it can still be spent ^[14].