WASHINGTON — NASA has directed a set of science committees to pause their work, citing recent Trump administration executive orders, a move that canceled one meeting and put planning for others on hold.
NASA Headquarters sent memos Jan. 31 to the leaders of several committees, known as “analysis groups” or “assessment groups,” that provide input to the agency’s astrophysics and planetary science divisions. The memo said NASA needed to determine if the groups’ activities complied with new executive orders.
“As NASA continues to review and ensure compliance with presidential actions, we are requesting that you please pause all meetings and activities of Planetary Science Analysis/Assessment Groups,” stated one memo, send to leaders of several planetary science groups. A similar memo was sent to leaders of astrophysics groups.
The memos cited at least six executive orders and memos, primarily addressing the administration’s efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the federal government as well as “gender ideology extremism.” It also cited one executive order on “Unleashing American Energy” that revoked Biden administration executive orders related to climate change.
The groups, often known as AGs, are not formal advisory committees governed by the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but do provide findings about the state of NASA’s astrophysics and planetary science programs that are transmitted to the agency. The AGs also discuss science topics in their fields and get updates on the status of current and planned missions and related programs.
The first AG affected by the pause is the Mercury Exploration Assessment Group (MExAG), which was scheduled to hold its annual meeting Feb. 4-6 at the Applied Physics Lab (APL). It was the first in-person meeting for the group, established in 2020 and which had met only virtually.
“The MExAG steering committee is heartbroken that our first in-person meeting was cancelled due to this,” said Mallory Kinczyk, an APL geologist and member of the MExAG steering committee, in a post on social media Feb .2.
The hybrid meeting, with in-person and virtual attendance options, had more than 200 registrants at the time the NASA memo came out, said another scientist, Ed Rivera-Valentin, on social media, about a third of whom planned to be there in person. The meeting expected to have a large contingent of scientists from Europe and Japan participating to discuss science from the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission to Mercury.
The meeting, spanning two and a half days, largely planned to discuss Mercury science, such as results from BepiColombo’s flybys of Mercury, as well as discussions of concepts for future missions. It did not include any topics that would clearly run afoul of recent executive orders on DEI or climate change.
Other AGs are considering if their meetings will be affected. In a memo late Jan. 31, Carol Paty and Morgan Cable, co-chairs of the Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG), said that to comply with the NASA directive they were putting on hold plans for their own community meeting, scheduled for late February in Tucson, Arizona, as well as a town hall planned for the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference outside Houston in mid-March.
“We anticipate cancelling the OPAG community meeting if no guidance is provided by the end of next week,” or Feb. 7, they wrote.
In another memo, Vicky Hamilton, chair of the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), said the group was putting on hold planning for its next meeting, a hybrid in-person/virtual event at the end of April. Two committees of the group will also pause their activities.
The pause of the AGs is the latest in a scattershot implementation of executive orders and directives since President Trump took office Jan. 20 that has confused and dismayed researchers and others. While NASA proceeded with a public meeting of its Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel on Jan. 30, the National Science Foundation postponed a public meeting of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee Jan. 30-31, a group that provides input to NSF, NASA and the Department of Energy on astrophysics topics. However, the Office of Space Commerce announced Jan. 29 it would hold a meeting of its advisory body, the Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES), on March 5.
NASA has started to implement directives related to the DEI orders, such as restricting funding for initiatives associated with DEI. That includes a program called Here to Observe, or H2O, that linked NASA planetary science missions with students from underrepresented institutions, offering outreach and mentorship.
Some have noticed changes to the NASA website as well. A 2023 article from NASA’s history office about NASA’s 1978 astronaut class, which included the first female, Black and Asian-American astronauts, was accessible as recently as Jan. 25 but returned error messages by Jan. 29, according to The Internet Archive.
It’s unclear why this article is no longer available, as others about the shuttle program and its astronauts remain online, although it makes a passing reference to diversity. “As a legacy of the diversity represented in the astronaut Class of 1978, during the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the Moon,” states the final sentence of the piece.
