minibus bill<\/a> that kept NASA\u2019s budget levels intact at just shy of $25 billion, including continued funding for much of the existing science missions.<\/p>\n\u201cSo we, the Planetary Society, led the charge. We organized 19 other science organizations. We got our members, 40,000 people, maybe some of you, wrote letters and emails, and we had visits to Capitol Hill,\u201d he said. \u201cWe went to our congressional office, senatorial office, and said, \u2018Look, NASA is a big deal. You don\u2019t want to cut NASA.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Their efforts paid off, but Nye issued a warning.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the thing, this could happen again. Three months from now, the same thing could happen. The same president\u2019s budget request could come out. The same pushback will be required. If we don\u2019t push back, then the NASA budget will get cut,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He reminded the crowd that some of these missions would be dead in the water with no chance for revival.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t just stop these things. You try to restart it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just can\u2019t keep the mission going if you keep stopping.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while commercial industry has been picking up the gauntlet of much of the science, NASA still provides the majority of funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is just a real concern for people in our business. If NASA, who pays a lot of the bills, cuts us off, then we\u2019re going to have difficulty staying in business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Bill](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tos-l-bill-nye-spacecom1057.jpg\")
Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, contrasts the Chinese and proposed United States space science efforts with the proposed budget during the Day 1 Closing Keynote: How the Nation’s Science Shapes Commercial Opportunity; during the SpaceCom 2026 conference at the Orange County Convention Center, on Thursday, January 29, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda\/ Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n
Nye also pointed out that the proposed budget was taking the U.S. a step backward. Meanwhile, China keeps moving forward across a whole range of science missions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to congratulate our colleagues from China National Space, they are doing just amazing, cool stuff. So some China National people here. Thank you. You\u2019re doing wonderful stuff. You are influencing the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One slide showed missions to Venus, Jupiter, the asteroid Apophis, exoplanets and more, and that China was funding missions to each. But under Trump\u2019s proposed budget, only the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope mission was funded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was the comparison. Cancel everything. Cancel every one of these planetary missions, and one of the planets is the Earth \u2014 Earth\u2019s magnetic field,\u201d he said. \u201cThat was their proposal, the president\u2019s budget request, just let the U.S. drop out of all of these missions, many of which were planned, many of which were started.\u201d<\/p>\n
He noted after the pushback from Congress, each of those missions were back.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcept, for some reason, the Mars Sample Return mission is still in limbo, probably because all the bids have been too high, wink wink,\u201d he said. \u201cSomebody can come up with a new, cheaper scheme. I\u2019m just sayin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then stumped for why the Mars Sample Return is worth Earth\u2019s time. He began by showing a rock located in Antarctica in 1984 that was proven to be a Martian rock. When looked at microscopically, there were patterns that suggested the possibility of life on Mars at one time.<\/p>\n
That was the impetus for NASA\u2019s Martian rovers, including this century\u2019s Curiosity and Perseverance missions, which are still active today. Nye showed images Perseverance found that showed Martian rocks with \u201cmythic, dare I say it, leopard spots.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd these leopard spots, as they\u2019re called, resemble stromatolites, things we find on Earth, of fossils, of ancient living things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He let that sink in.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy friends, people, if we were to find evidence of life on another world, it would change this world,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would change the way everybody thinks about being a living thing in the cosmos. It would change everything. I\u2019m not saying we start driving on the left, but it would change you.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea we would send people to retrieve the samples already gathered by Perseverance is not some Nye can get behind.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want it to get really expensive, if you want it to be inconclusive, send people, because people are just bags of microbes, and they will contaminate the site before we can figure this out,\u201d he said. \u201cI want, before anybody goes to Mars and starts walking around and spitting on things, I wanted to get at least one of these back to see if this hypothesis is is reasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took his final moments to encourage the commercial companies at the site to keep the science engine running.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want you all in commercial space to consider investing in science. Hire some scientists. Make a deal with space agencies to do some science for them,\u201d he said. \u201cSo everybody, if we invest in science, I claim, we can, dare I say it, change the world!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill Nye let a packed crowd at the Orange Convention Center know that it\u2019s not a good idea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[51,2843,12,70,10022,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-730810","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-social","13":"tag-space","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115984049447224646","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Bill](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tos-l-bill-nye-spacecom0932.jpg\")
Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, with a chart of NASA’s budget over time, as he delivers the Day 1 Closing Keynote: How the Nation’s Science Shapes Commercial Opportunity; during the SpaceCom 2026 conference at the Orange County Convention Center, on Thursday, January 29, 2026. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda\/ Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n