Science & Technology · The Record
NASA describes community college astronomy courseware as the FY2027 request proposes a 46% science cut
Five instructors adapted the opening five chapters of OpenStax Astronomy 101 inside a NASA program funded by cooperative agreements. The administrator told Congress not to focus on a specific department.
NASA's Science Activation program published an account on Aug. 10, 2026 of five community college instructors adapting the opening chapters of a widely used astronomy textbook into active-learning courseware. It is a short, routine document. It is also unusually specific about who did the work, over what period, and what happens next, which is what makes it worth reading beside an argument NASA's administrator made to Congress about what the agency's education money buys.
The release describes three Science Activation project teams: the NASA Community College Network, which it says is led by the SETI Institute; Infiniscope, led by Arizona State University; and NASA Treks. In June 2026 the teams held a virtual workshop on turning the OpenStax Astronomy 101 textbook into what the release calls Relevant Engaging Active Learning courseware, while keeping the book's core content and explanatory narrative intact.
Over the following two weeks, according to the release, the instructors each adopted one of the opening five chapters and enhanced it with active learning modules drawn from materials developed by SciAct project teams, among them NASA Treks, Universe of Learning and Cosmic Data Stories. The results were presented in a wrap-up presentation in July, and the release states that the chapters "will be field-tested in community college classrooms in Fall 2026."
The release thanks the five instructors by name: Carver Bierson of Scottsdale Community College, Dan Chase of Modesto Community College, Dennis Just of Pima Community College, Steve Tuckey of Jackson College and Sally Watt of Glendale Community College. NASA describes their contribution favorably. Nothing in the record cited here places any of them in the budget dispute that follows.
The funding mechanism is stated in the document itself. The release says all three teams, and many of the projects whose materials they drew on, are supported by NASA cooperative agreement awards and sit inside the NASA Science Activation Program portfolio.
That is the record. The claim it complicates was made at a House Science Committee hearing on the FY2027 budget request, where NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman defended the request's treatment of the agency's education funding. SpacePolicyOnline.com's account of the hearing quotes him saying: "I would just caution against being overly focused on a specific department when the entire agency's budget directly contributes to inspiration."
In SpacePolicyOnline.com's account, the request was released by the President and by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, and the cut it proposes is put at $5.6 billion, or 23%, from the FY2026 enacted level. The Planetary Society's analysis of the same request gives the same topline figure and says $3.4 billion of it would come from science activities, "a decrease of 46% from the prior year," along with more than 40 missions the request labels low priority.
A distinction gets collapsed in most accounts of this fight, and it matters here. The program that produced this document is Science Activation. The line Congress argued over in the previous cycle is the Office of STEM Engagement, a different name in a different set of documents. The Planetary Society wrote of that cycle that "The NASA Office of STEM Engagement, eliminated entirely in the OMB proposal, is also fully funded in the minibus." None of the documents cited here place Science Activation inside that office, and none of them state that the FY2027 request eliminates Science Activation by name. What the record shows is a funded program publishing granular curriculum work while the directorate-scale science budget it is published under is proposed for a 46% reduction.
The FY2026 cycle is the nearest precedent. The Planetary Society called that year's proposal "the largest single-year cut to NASA in history," including a 47% cut to NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The bill that followed provides NASA with $24.44 billion, and brings NASA Science to $7.25 billion, by the same group's account. Appropriators rejected the proposed elimination of the education line, maintaining it at $143 million in the House-Senate report. A budget request is a proposal, and in the last cycle the proposal and the report disagreed.
Analysis. The two documents do not cancel each other out, and the record does not show that Isaacman said anything false. His argument is about where inspiration comes from across an agency budget. The Science Activation release describes something narrower and more mechanical: named instructors, a fixed count of chapters, a two-week working period, a wrap-up presentation, a scheduled classroom test. A mission produces images and data. Turning those into a chapter a student works through, with modules and a narrative that survives the edit, is separate labor with a schedule and people attached. Set side by side, the open question the hearing exchange leaves is not whether missions inspire. It is which line pays the people who convert a mission into a chapter, and the release cited here answers that with cooperative agreement awards rather than with a mission.
That question has a checkable form. The release states the chapters will be field-tested in Fall 2026 and that next steps include expanding the work across the rest of the textbook. If the program is funded and proceeding as described, a public account of that field test or of the expansion should appear on NASA's Science Activation pages by Dec. 31, 2026. If nothing has appeared by that date, the schedule stated in this release did not hold.
What this piece could not check. The hearing quotation comes from SpacePolicyOnline.com's account rather than from an official transcript or committee video, and it is attributed here as reported. That account does not give a calendar date for the request's release. The Planetary Society analysis available here includes the phrase "would be its lowest in 66 years," but the excerpt does not establish what the phrase refers to, so this piece makes no claim about it. NASA and Administrator Isaacman have not commented for this piece; a documented comment request to each named subject is required before publication, and no reply had been received when this was written.