On an Ambitious Antarctic Quest, One Nation Is on the Sidelines

None of the main research on the voyage of the Araon was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a sign of the difficult times for American science.VideoThe Korea Polar Research Institute this season has brought 38 scientists and engineers from around the world aboard its icebreaker, the Araon.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesFeb. 19, 2026, 5:00 a.m. ETAmong the nearly 40 scientists who were at sea for eight weeks on a major expedition to Antarctica that ended on Thursday, roughly one in four was American.But their work was supported largely by private foundations; none of their main research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. government’s largest backer of nonmedical science.The ship that they traveled on is owned by South Korea. Under President Trump, the National Science Foundation last year decommissioned the only U.S. icebreaker devoted to studying the frozen continent.“I feel really disappointed,” David Holland, a polar scientist at New York University who was on the expedition, which focused on Antarctica’s most menacing glacier. “I’m used to frustration when working in Antarctica. But disappointment with the N.S.F. is a different thing.”It marks a big change from a few years ago, when the National Science Foundation worked with Britain to support scientists on multiple voyages to the glacier, the Thwaites, an unstable mass of ice the size of Florida. Thwaites helps hold back the enormous West Antarctic ice sheet, so scientists fear that its collapse could cause huge amounts of ice to start sliding into the ocean, adding an extra 15 feet to global sea-level rise over the coming centuries.But researchers still need a deeper understanding of how the glacier is melting and breaking apart before they can forecast exactly how much extra water coastal cities should expect, and when.Last year, the National Science Foundation under Mr. Trump funded fewer grants in every area of science, as part of what his administration calls a campaign to slash wasteful and “woke” spending. Awards for geosciences, which include Antarctic research, were down a quarter in 2025 compared with the average from the decade before.David Holland, a polar scientist at New York University, celebrated as two of his robots were released into the sea.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesTo many polar scientists, the bigger blows were the canceling of the U.S. icebreaker, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, and the shelving of plans for a replacement. For the first time in half a century, American researchers are without a dedicated Antarctic ship.“In the past, the U.S. was the leader,” said Julie M. Palais, a former director of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic glaciology program. “We invited scientists from other countries to join our field programs to take advantage of our logistics. Now, it is our turn to come begging to other countries, not so much as payback, but hopefully as a way to help us bridge this difficult time in American science.”In a statement to The Times, Mike England, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, said the agency remained “committed to maintaining America’s active and influential presence through a world-leading science program in Antarctica.”The agency has continued investing in overdue upgrades to America’s three aging research stations in Antarctica, Mr. England said. It is funding several Thwaites-related projects, he noted, though they involve analyzing data collected on past voyages rather than taking new measurements at the glacier. And, he added, the agency is using two substitute vessels, the Sikuliaq and the Roger Revelle, to host scientists who had been preparing to work aboard the Palmer this season.But the Sikuliaq is smaller than the Palmer, and it can’t spend as many days at sea without resupplying. And the Revelle isn’t an icebreaker, so it is limited in where it can operate around Antarctica. Mr. England declined to say how the agency planned to support oceangoing expeditions in the future.VideoWon Sang Lee, the expedition’s chief scientist, on Jan. 27 at the drilling camp on the Thwaites Glacier.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThe Korea Polar Research Institute this season brought 38 scientists and engineers from around the world to Thwaites aboard its icebreaker, the Araon, as part of a nine-year campaign to investigate Antarctica’s future in a warming climate.This year’s voyage to Thwaites, the second of four that are planned, cost the institute $1.5 million to $2 million, according to Won Sang Lee, the expedition’s chief scientist. The institute covered the outside researchers’ shipboard expenses, like food and fuel, but not their equipment or salaries, which is why they still needed outside funding.Dr. Holland of New York University applied to the National Science Foundation for $2 million to support a series of projects at Thwaites. He was preparing to install a fiber-optic cable that would take the first detailed temperature readings of the warm ocean water that is melting the glacier from below. But his application was rejected, so instead he secured a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, a fund established by the Intel co-founder and his wife.Chris Pierce, a glaciologist at Montana State University, and his three colleagues were funded by NASA and the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation, which supports Earth science research, to survey Thwaites’s cracked and damaged interior using a helicopter-mounted radar.A three-person team from the University of California, Davis, was financed by the Korea Polar Research Institute to launch a robot into the seas in front of Pine Island Glacier, another fast-deteriorating glacier near Thwaites.Romane Bouchard, a master’s student at the University of British Columbia, is part of a three-person team that launched an underwater robot near Pine Island Glacier.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesJamin Greenbaum, a polar geophysicist, pitched the National Science Foundation on a bold plan for this trip: He would take measurements inside the narrow canyons between Thwaites’s broken-up blocks of ice.These rifts are too choked with sea ice for ships to sail through, but Dr. Greenbaum and his colleagues had developed a floating platform that he thought could be lowered by helicopter. If it worked, it would allow data to be collected in the waters beneath areas of the glacier that had previously been inaccessible, and reveal new details about how warm ocean currents are eroding the ice from below.The National Science Foundation turned him down. The grant reviewers called his idea “transformative,” he said, but “too high risk.”He started cobbling together money from other sources, including the Explorers Club and his employer, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. He put research expenses on his personal credit card. He prepared to use equipment that other scientists had donated to him.Finally, just weeks before the Araon was scheduled to set sail for Antarctica in December, a $500,000 grant came from the Fund for Science and Technology, a philanthropy supported by the estate of the Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen. Dr. Greenbaum and his team could at last pay their bills and get to work.VideoResearchers prepared to lower a sensor into the sea from the open door of a helicopter.CreditCredit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesImageDr. Greenbaum, a polar geophysicist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesDr. Greenbaum says the National Science Foundation has a weakness that predates the Trump administration’s budget cuts. It doesn’t swing for the fences, he said.Essentially, the agency tends to fund projects that others have already done before, Dr. Greenbaum said, only half joking. And it is reluctant to back projects that span multiple field seasons, as research involving new technologies often requires.Dr. Palais, the former program director with the National Science Foundation, agreed, saying flat budgets and rising costs had left “fewer opportunities for sustained, high-risk, high-reward field programs.”Mr. England, the National Science Foundation spokesman, said “All N.S.F.-supported projects, including international partnerships, undergo rigorous, merit-based peer review to ensure scientific excellence and responsible stewardship of public resources.”To some U.S. scientists, the country’s deep well of talent ensures it will remain relevant in polar research, even as China expands its ambitions and infrastructure in Antarctica as well as the Arctic. China opened its fifth Antarctic research base in 2024, and has proposed to build a sixth by next year. This year, a Chinese team is attempting to drill through 3,000 meters, or almost 10,000 feet, of an Antarctic glacier to study a lake buried under the ice.“Our pool of researchers, technologies, scientific will, is huge,” said Eric Rignot, a professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine. “But we are all stranded on the sidelines right now, which is unbearable and counterproductive.”The threat from rising seas is so great that it justifies a much larger investment in Antarctic research, said Richard Alley, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University.“A lot of us have been planning for what is possible with limited funds,” Dr. Alley said, “rather than developing research plans for what is necessary.”VideoSiobhán Johnson of the British Antarctic Survey took an ice-core sample.CreditCredit...Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times.SKIP