Critical scientific documents go missing from NASA-backed lunar community website
A whole host of documents presenting work and recommendations of US scientists and engineers in service of NASA’s Moon exploration goals have gone missing from the website of the agency-backed Lunar Exploration Analysis Group (LEAG). The missing documents include but is not limited to the key 2023 CLOC-SAT report by US lunar experts, which urged NASA to plan a replacement for the 2009-launched Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to support the increasingly important, upcoming NASA-funded robotic and crewed Moon missions part of the US Artemis program. The link to the report now leads to a dead page with no fallback. Here’s an archived version of the report thanks to the Internet Archive. In fact, the whole master list of LEAG’s annual meeting reports and other such high-level documents dating back two decades is gone. Here’s an archived list of them.
Similarly, the document archive of work by researchers contributing to the Extraterrestrial Materials Analysis Group (ExMAG) in direct support of NASA’s Solar-System-wide sample return missions, which includes Artemis, is also a dead webpage now. Here’s an archived link of the same.
This global loss of accessible scientific information has happened because the new US administration with its many recent executive orders—in the name of ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and defending women—has imposed an indefinite pause on activities, meetings, and communications of all such working groups supporting NASA’s science and exploration activities. In fact, the entire website of LEAG has been reduced to a single page stating but a single line:
The LEAG website is being reviewed in response to guidance given by NASA leadership.
Recall that LEAG’s founding purpose was to help NASA forge and meet its Moon exploration objectives by providing analysis across scientific, technical, commercial, and operational aspects of space. One of these outcomes was LEAG’s Artemis recommendations. But you wouldn’t be able to know any of this now as all links currently point to a black hole for an indefinite period. Here’s the archived webpage of LEAG’s founding purpose and the archived copy of their Artemis recommendations.
Regardless of your personal or public views on DEI, how is loss of access to publicly-funded scientific and technical work produced by LEAG and ExMAG in direct support of NASA’s exploration an acceptable outcome? All of this currently censored work was done and put up online in the past whereas the executive orders from the Trump administration have come in the present. How is a blind blanket takedown of everything justified? Heck, even the white paper titled Continued Use of the Mean Earth (ME) Coordinate System for the Moon is not accessible (here’s the archived copy). If one claims that things like thinking about lunar coordinate systems and urging an LRO replacement for the US’ own benefit is somehow tied to DEI, one is objectively wrong.
More than 500 scientists from across the US are banding together to communicate this and other degradations of US science via an open letter to NASA leadership and the elected US Congressional representatives, asking them to take action and preserve the integrity and public access of the country’s scientific activities and its output. The open letter can be signed anonymously, including by people in other countries who would like to show their support.
It was shortly after the US electoral outcome in November that I had raised the importance of archiving key public documents and webpages to ensure they remain public. It’s sad to see the need to act on it has come about this early. Please archive key lunar and space exploration webpages using the free tools of the Internet Archive, archive.ph, ArchiveBox, Perma.cc, Conifer, and more.
Originally published as part of Moon Monday #212