These proposed cuts to NASA science are significantly harming not only the national security interests of the United States, but also the lives, safety, and resilience of citizens across the country and globe. While NASA’s astrophysics and planetary science divisions monitor and explore worlds and the Universe beyond our own, including potentially hazardous asteroids and comets, it’s NASA’s Earth science and heliophysics divisions that teach us things that directly impact our planet.

NASA’s Earth observing satellites and stations are key to monitoring climate, water resources, natural disasters and their impacts, air pollution, wildfires, droughts, and key infrastructure components all across the world. Satellite instruments monitor stores of groundwater, and can identify weather events even as they’re still forming over the oceans.