Casey Dreier

1 week ago | copernical.com | Casey Dreier

The White House’s FY 2026 budget request for NASA proposes a radical shift in the agency’s direction, proposing extinction-level cuts to space science, severe cuts in other program areas and […]

1 week ago | spacenews.com | Casey Dreier

The White House’s FY 2026 budget request for NASA proposes a radical shift in the agency’s direction, proposing extinction-level cuts to space science, severe cuts in other program areas and a dramatic pivot of human spaceflight focus to Mars. I don’t know if the cuts will ultimately occur, but I am confident in the following: As proposed, the new humans-to-Mars initiative will fail.

1 month ago | planetary.org | Casey Dreier

April 11, 2025 | 7:29 a.m. PTCasey Dreier, Chief of Space PolicyPassback is when the Office of Management and Budget — the White House's accounting arm — provides a near-final budget proposal to NASA prior to its official release. It's not set in stone, but it's very close to being so. Today, reporting indicates that NASA's passback decimates science: a 50% cut, falling particularly hard on Astrophysics (cut by 70%) and Earth Science (-53%).

2 months ago | sltrib.com | Casey Dreier

Roughly 120 light-years from Earth sits K2-18b, a planet bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, orbiting a cool dwarf star at just the right Goldilocks-like distance where it's not too cold and not too hot for liquid water to form. Some scientists suspect the planet's surface has a warm liquid ocean hundreds of miles deep.

Dec 9, 2024 | planetary.org | Casey Dreier

Canceling VIPER undermines the scientific credibility of NASA’s Artemis campaign and the goal of establishing a permanent human presence on the lunar surface. The rover — managed by NASA’s Ames Research Center and built by Johnson Space Center — would help determine the origin, distribution, and abundance of water on the Moon at scales relevant to future human explorers. It is the most significant U.S. science mission planned at the Moon this decade.