In gathering data on research trends, the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics found U.S. astronomy to be in generally good health. The United States still leads the field.
New discoveries continue to be made at a quickening pace.
There has been a dramatic shift in the funding for individual research grants in astronomy, with NSF's share falling from 60 percent at the beginning of the 1980s to 30 percent at the end of the 1990s. NASA's share of the grant funding has risen commensurately. The continuing growth in funding for the astronomy enterprise in the 1980s and 1990s has been largely the result of the success of the NASA space science program, in particular the launch of NASA's Great Observatories and several midsized facility-class satellites. At the beginning of the 1980s, the NSF provided 60 percent of the federal support for individual research grants. By the end of the 1990s, NASA was providing 72 percent of the support for individual grants.