NASA planetary science rearrangement threatens research budgets

Nature : On 3 December, NASA’s planetary sciences division announced that it is changing how it distributes its $1.2 billion in funding. Because the organizational system had been criticized for being overly complex, the new plan will divide available funding among just five categories: emerging worlds, solar system workings, habitable worlds, exobiology, and solar system observations. Although the simplification of the organization has received support, one of the other announced changes has provoked criticism. Most US planetary scientists receive funding from the NASA division. While established researchers get their money from major missions such as the Curiosity rover or Cassini probe, almost half of the planetary scientists in the US receive more than half of their funding through grants from a $250 million research and analysis budget. As the division has announced it will not be accepting any new grant submissions in 2014, those researchers are concerned that they will not be able to find replacement funding next year.