At NASA, officials are moving quickly to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order directing agencies to cease funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. NASA has already informed researchers supported by one high-profile program for undergraduate students that several of the agency’s spacecraft contractors will no longer take part in the program, following the agency’s guidance. And NASA has warned the researchers that it is likely to kill grants that have already been awarded.
Unlike some other federal research agencies, NASA only recently began to ask researchers it funds to prepare inclusion plans for their grants and missions. But NASA leaders frequently touted one new program, called Here to Observe (H2O), which paired undergraduates from underrepresented groups with scientists running NASA missions. Begun as a pilot in 2021, H2O grew into a full grant program 2 years ago, awarding smaller research universities up to $75,000 a year to spark their students’ interest in science.
Trump’s 20 January executive order, however, gave agencies 60 days to terminate DEI programs such as H2O. Despite uncertainly over whether that order would hold up in court, on 23 January, Karla Smith Jackson, NASA’s assistant administrator for procurement, sent out a memo to all agency contractors and awardees stating they should “immediately … cease and desist all DEI activities required of their contracts or grants.”
By last week, half of the mission scientists supporting H2O had seen their support contracts canceled by their host institution, according to a memo seen by Science. NASA also ended the contracts for training H2O mentors and evaluating the program. Overall funding for H2O has been suspended, and at least one of its primary investigators says their NASA program officer told them their grant would probably be canceled. (NASA has not responded to a request for comment.)
Such notices have thrown H2O programs at universities into disarray. At the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, which primarily serves students of Hispanic background, students are now unsure whether they will be able to complete a key class project. They were supposed to build a radiometer as part of a partnership with scientists on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which has mapped potential water and other resources on the Moon since 2009. But, “It is unclear if the students will be able to do this now,” says atmospheric dynamicist Raúl Morales-Juberías, who leads the program.
The suspension has also prompted the cancellation of two field trips planned for the spring, one to Spaceport America and the other to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Perhaps most valuable to the students, however, was the one-to-one mentoring they received from members of the LRO team—mentoring that is now likely to be lost, at least through formal channels. The university has pledged to keep the course going this semester, but Morales-Juberías says, “If the funding does not resume, we will have to cut all the activities related to the program.”
Another H2O program enabled 14 students from the Kutztown University of Pennsylvania to collaborate with scientists collecting rocks on the surface of Mars with the Perseverance rover. As part of the program, the students observed Perseverance team meetings where the scientists discuss the geology that the rover was rolling over, and asked questions. Most eye opening for the students, says Erin Kraal, a geomorphologist who co-leads the program, was hearing the team debate how to interpret a new piece of data. The students had never heard a “scientific argument” before, Kraal says, and afterward one student told her: “I thought that they would know everything all the time.”
The students also valued their connections with mentors on the Perseverance team, Kraal says. The students bragged about their mentors and consulted them about challenges such as failing a class or not getting a job. “These mentors were just people, like them,” she says. “Even though they work for NASA.”
Like Morales-Juberías, Kraal and her collaborator plan to keep the course going, no matter what happens to their NASA funding. But if NASA cancels the grant, it’s likely that contact with mission scientists will end, at least on their paid time.
She also notes that the funding blow has come even as her program was showing results. It focuses on first-year students who are the first in their family to attend college and come from families receiving financial aid. “Support in the first year is critical.”
It has paid off, she notes: All of the students who became involved with H2O last fall continued into the spring semester and remained science, technology, engineering, and math majors. “This is well above the typical persistence, retention, and academic standing for first-year students,” Kraal says.
