NASA's Science Mission Directorate has selected nineteen proposals in 2026 that will create new opportunities for volunteers to contribute to NASA science, the agency reported on October 28, 2026. The selections span two programs: the Citizen Science Seed Funding Program (CSSFP-25), which supports scientists in developing citizen science projects, and the Science Activation Program (SciAct), which funds teams that connect communities with NASA data and researchers.

Twelve proposals were chosen under the seed funding program, covering astrophysics, heliophysics and planetary science. Among them are projects inviting volunteers to search SPHEREx data for free-floating planets and brown dwarfs, classify mock galaxy images to study mergers, characterize overlapping galaxy pairs, and spot exoplanets in Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope data through microlensing. Heliophysics projects include setting up low-cost magnetometers in Alaska, identifying plasma waves through sound, and examining data on foreshock transients and particle precipitation. Planetary projects involve mapping lunar iron deposits and using a worldwide telescope network to monitor cometary outbursts.

Seven SciAct teams were selected, with several planning to incorporate citizen science or community science. They include Growing Beyond Earth, which equips classrooms to run space crop experiments; Sungrazer 2.0, which continues a comet-hunting effort whose volunteers have identified 5,204 comets and counting; and a project expanding access to 22 robotic telescopes. Others address amateur radio studies of the ionosphere, lake-level monitoring, and Antarctic species and habitats. The source text was cut off before describing further selected proposals.