Washington

In the end, it was put down to a misunderstanding. But dozens of planetary scientists were enraged last week to be told — erroneously, as it turned out — that their NASA grants had been terminated.

Curt Niebur, who administers the US space agency's research programme for the outer planets, wrote to grantees on 24 January saying: “I regret to inform you that the [fiscal year 2005] funds to support this program have been redirected by the order of the NASA Administrator to meet other agency needs.”

The money, which totals $4.8 million for 55 grants, funds the analysis of data from missions such as Galileo and Cassini, as well as the basic research that lays the foundations for future missions.

Niebur's letter prompted a flurry of e-mails and an immediate reaction from the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. Grantees were asked to contact Congress, and to write testimonials about the negative effects of suddenly losing their funding. One postdoc wrote: “I just moved across the country to work. Now I have no job.”

Almost immediately, NASA science managers began back-pedalling, claiming that the problem had been blown out of proportion. On 27 January, Andrew Dantzler, acting director of the agency's Solar System division, wrote to the grantees: “Your Outer Planets Research funding has not been cut.” Instead, he wrote, it was being moved to another account “for purely administrative reasons”.

It was all due to miscommunication within his office, Dantzler says — and it won't happen again. The office has no plans to cut grant money, he adds, calling his research funding “quite healthy”.

But Dantzler acknowledges that “the timing couldn't have been worse”, coming just as scientists fear the imminent cancellation of NASA's Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission (see Nature 433, 342; 2005 10.1038/433342a). The flap demonstrates just how edgy space researchers have become, with every day bringing fresh rumours of cuts to NASA science programmes, such as servicing of the Hubble telescope.

In their initial anger, some scientists were clearly prepared to think the worst of NASA. One anonymous e-mail said: “This administration's attitudes toward basic science and education are extremely disappointing.”