#NASADidThat, a rap by Dr. Raven Baxter, makes the case for NASA's science budget

Dr. Raven Baxter released #NASADidThat on July 10, 2025, a rap and music video about the everyday technology that came out of NASA research. She wrote, produced and performed it.

"Satellites up, hurricanes spin. Tap your weather app, NASA locked in," the song opens, over a satellite image of a storm.

The video came out the same day the Senate Appropriations Committee took up the bill that funds NASA for 2026. The White House had proposed cutting NASA from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion, SpacePolicyOnline reported. Its plan would cut NASA science by 47%, from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion. The committee's draft bill kept NASA at $24.9 billion and science at $7.3 billion. "We rejected cuts that would have devastated NASA Science by 47 percent and would have terminated 55 operating and planned missions," Sen. Chris Van Hollen said at the meeting, according to Astronomy. The committee recessed that day without voting on the bill, Astronomy reported.

Baxter's lyrics run through a list of technologies and research tied to NASA. They include phone cameras, headsets, LASIK, memory foam, CAT scans and racing swimsuits. Later verses add map pins, the computer mouse, invisible braces, baby formula, cancer research and scratch-resistant lenses. NASA's own Spinoff publication has profiled more than 2,000 such technologies since 1976.

Baxter raps the phone-camera line of #NASADidThat. Image: Raven Baxter video

"The cam in ya hand NASA built that," she raps.

Then she voices the skeptic. "Okay but like, don't they just put people in space? Like what's the big deal?"

Baxter voices a skeptic's question in #NASADidThat. Image: Raven Baxter video

The spoken outro answers with a run of open questions about aliens, black holes, gravity, asteroids, Mars and radiation in space. "Well, we're trying to figure that out. That's what we get paid to do," Baxter says in character. An on-screen note makes clear she is speaking as a citizen. "I don't work for NASA I'm just a concerned taxpayer," it reads.

She then turns to the budget. "NASA's a reason why we've been a scientific power in this world since 1958," she says. The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 created NASA, which opened on October 1 of that year, according to the agency.

"But y'all want to cut our budget in half," Baxter says. Her figure tracks the proposed 47% cut to NASA science. The proposed cut to the agency as a whole was about a quarter.

"We only spend less than a penny on NASA for every federal dollar. And y'all think that's too much," she says. The Planetary Society puts NASA at about 0.35% of federal spending in 2025.

A chart of proposed NASA budget changes appears as Baxter delivers the spoken outro. Image: Raven Baxter video

Baxter closes by standing with the other federal science agencies. "Put some respect on everybody. All my people, the NIH, the NSF, the FDA, the CDC, NASA, everybody," she says. The end card asks viewers to "contact your representatives and tell them to save science and save America's future."

Baxter is a molecular biologist and science communicator who writes, produces and performs science rap as Dr. Raven the Science Maven.

The video is also on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and Bluesky.