NASA satellite mission INCUS could be grounded due to budget cuts; Colorado State University researchers fight for funding

Based out of Colorado State University, the Investigation of Cloud Updrafts, or INCUS, is a mission meant to better understand and predict storms that lead to severe weather where people's lives are at risk and property could be destroyed. But President Trump's 2026 NASA budget request says that to achieve cost savings, the INCUS venture class mission won't continue and will close out next year.

Sue van den Heever is steering the mission and is the first woman to lead a NASA Earth venture mission. Here in Colorado, we've seen dangerous and damaging storms, especially with hail along the Front Range and the Eastern Plains. "I like to compare storms to people. Their storms have a lot of different personalities or characteristics, and the storms we're interested in are very dynamic," she says.

So far, scientists' ability to study and predict severe weather has been limited to radar on the ground. Until now. 

INCUS is based on CSU's Foothills Campus. Van den Heever's work is done out of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere at CSU, but NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is implementing the mission. 

"We have a lot of private partners in the Colorado interest side of things, which is supremely cool. We have Blue Canyon Technologies down in Boulder, and they are building the bus, which is what you put all the instruments into. And we have Tendeg, who's building the antenna for the radars. And then we also have CU Boulder, whose LASP laboratory is involved in some of the mission operations. So it's a true Colorado story," van den Heever says.

For more than ten years, van den Heever has dedicated her time to the mission. It is planning to use three satellites about the size of a bar refrigerator, allowing researchers to study the inside of a storm.  It will be the first global satellite observation of air and water transport to the troposphere, within the atmosphere, which is where the more modern data will come from.

"The radars allow us to look through storms. We can take slices through storms, and the radiometer allows us to look at the top of storms. If you can look at the top of something, and you can look through things, then you can look at the three-dimensional nature of storms. And so that really allows us to dig into storms and to see what's going on inside of storms," explains van den Heever.

Not only will this technology shake up how scientists predict severe weather, it will also advance satellite instrumentation. Van den Heever says older satellites orbiting Earth right now weigh thousands of kilograms, or at least a ton, while the INCUS team has developed miniature instruments. She says, "This means that we can fly these in chains of satellites. I can hold the radar in my hand. You could never hold one of those huge radars. This has really revolutionized the space industry by being able to fly small sets, because being able to fly in a chain means you can look at the same storm [multiple times]. One satellite goes over, looks. Another one goes over, looks. Another one goes over, looks. And you can see how the storm is changing in time very rapidly." 

But not everyone is as impressed with the space industry's gains. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert represents Colorado's fourth district and sits on the House Committee for Natural Resources. That committee oversees the Department of Commerce, which sits on top of NOAA. Although INCUS is part of NASA, NOAA will benefit from INCUS's data.

Boebert shared a statement with CBS Colorado. In part, she says, "President Trump and I have been very clear: the federal government needs to become far more efficient in every area, which includes NOAA. We've spent billions on so-called 'climate science' for decades, and still, our state continues to be ravaged by wildfires." She goes on to say, "Government spending has been out of control at every level of government in Colorado and our country for far too long, and that's not a partisan problem. We need to get our fiscal house in order, prioritize the things that need to come first, like securing our border, and allow the private sector to step up with real, efficient solutions in the meantime. I'll continue to advocate for responsible management of our state's resources through reforms and cutting red tape, but the days of out-of-control spending are done."

Similarly, a senior research fellow for Energy and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, Jack Spencer, agrees. Spencer says the U.S. needs to recalculate what's important. "We have to remember the nation is almost $40 trillion in debt, and you know that's real money. We have to do some re-prioritization of what we're spending federal dollars on."

But van den Heever says this data is crucial for our future. "Our hope is a much better prediction of the intensity of storms. With increasing populations, more people [are] living in and around coastal areas, just as people living even in and around urban areas. You know, growing populations, we need to understand how better to protect our people, protect our property," she says.

The budget request says Trump wants NASA to refocus on beating China back to the moon and get the first humans to Mars. CBS Colorado reached out to the White House and NASA, neither of which would comment on the proposed cuts since the budget has not been finalized by Congress.

Spencer believes work like van den Heever's can be done by the private sector, saving taxpayers money. NASA gave CSU $177 million to fund INCUS, and van den Heever says the mission will be ready to launch next year. 

Even though most NASA missions' budgets are spent while on Earth, Spencer calls INCUS a sunk cost. "If any project, regardless of how much has been spent on it, if it doesn't fit into your future priorities, just the act of having spent on [it] in the past does not justify continuing [to spend] in the future."

But van den Heever doesn't want to speculate about INCUS's end. "Right now, our direction is to move forward. Business as usual. So that's our current direction. We're just working really hard to get the hardware built." She adds, "All of these great ideas, to then have it culminate in something that is potentially so useful and could help so many people, to see that launch and start providing us with these observations, that's every scientist's dream".

We won't know for sure if INCUS will be cut until Congress finalizes next year's federal budget by October 1. But CSU is still pushing, saying, "While we have been engaged in contingency planning for several months, we cannot speculate on hypothetical budget outcomes. Our focus is on doing everything possible to preserve and protect funding. Federal research funding underpins the science that allows for accurate weather forecasting, severe weather detection, and long-term trend analysis. CSU remains committed to advancing scientific discovery, serving the public good, and protecting the world-class capabilities that our faculty, students, and partners have built over decades."