When Roohi Dalal joined the American Astronomical Society (AAS) as its deputy director of public policy in 2024, she never imagined she’d be leading the fight for space science just one year later as NASA science budgets are in the federal crosshairs.
“In some ways, I feel really lucky to have started my job when I did,” she told Payload. “People are very rightfully scared and concerned about their future, their job, and the state of the profession and the field. To give people a way to channel that productively is really important to me.”
In her role, Dalal led a grassroots advocacy campaign that drove 2,500+ people to send 6,000+ messages to lawmakers, calling for greater NASA funding. She also led a letter in support of the agency’s science budget that got a record number of congressional offices signing on, according to Joel Parriott, the deputy chief executive officer and director of external affairs and public policy at AAS, who nominated Dalal.
Streaking sats: Dalal was pursuing a doctorate in astrophysics in 2019 when she started noticing more and more satellites making an appearance in imagery, streaking across the galaxies she was trying to study.
“As I sought out more information on why the satellite population in low Earth orbit was suddenly increasing, I became fascinated by space sustainability, and the many topics encompassed by that term—from dark and quiet skies, to orbital debris mitigation,” she said.
Policy push: Dalal is trying to make sure space fans understand that policy decisions are just as important as technical milestones, when it comes to whether science missions come to fruition. She’s working with Astronomy on Tap—an organization that hosts space talks at bars—to make sure policy is at least part of the discussion
“We’re trying to partner with those locations to not necessarily have policy talks, but have science talks and then say at the end, ‘This science might not happen because of the funding situation.’ That captures a lot of people’s attention,” she said.
