Prasher had applied to the National Institutes of Health for funding but had been turned down, and by the time he was undergoing review for promotion from assistant to untenured associate, he had decided to leave academia. Subsequently, Prasher worked for the Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture at its Otis Plant Protection Center in Cape Cod, Massachusetts as a population geneticist, and was later transferred to the Plant Germplasm Quarantine & Biotechnology Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland. After a mild heart attack, he went to work for NASA subcontractor AZ Technology in Huntsville, Alabama, working on an existing project to develop hand-held devices to monitor cabin environment and to perform human diagnostics during long-term spaceflight. A year and a half later, he lost his job when NASA reorganized and canceled the project.
