Accept it or not, Donald Trump is the president of United States. Correct or incorrect the American citizens have decided which the people across the world may not agree. But Trump’s presidency might just be good news for the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA). All throughout his election campaigns, Trump has not shed enough light about the future of NASA, but his plans about NASA does sound promising.
Robert S. Walker, former chairman of the House Science Committee and a likely member of Trump’s NASA transition team said in an interview with The Verge, “The science that is being doing is essentially Earth-based science. It relates to weather; it relates to Earth-based needs. And so NOAA is probably a more appropriate place for that to be done. The goal is to free up funds for more NASA human exploration missions into deep space.”
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This approach is going to affect the future of NASA’s Earth & Science division largely. NASA received $1.921 billion for its Earth Science division for fiscal year 2016, scaling up from $1.5 billion in 2009. Under ex-US president Barack Obama’s regime of 8 years, NASA has launched a series of key Earth-observing satellites, such as the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCVR) and the Jason satellites, which have gathered valuable data about Earth’s climate, space weather, sea level changes, and more.
"They’re not going to be able to cut Earth Science by a billion and use that for exploration," Jim Muncy, founder of PoliSpace, a space policy consulting agency. "But with the Republicans in the Senate and the House, we haven’t had undivided government like this since the beginning of Obama."
One of the biggest steps taken by NASA under Obama administration was the public-private partnerships, an initiative in which NASA has partnered with commercial companies to fulfill one of the agency’s exploration needs.
As for the future of NASA, it looks promising but for the Earth and Science division it remains hanging in the balance. All we can hope for the future is that Donald Trump doesn’t turn out he be the present as he has been portrayed by the popular media.
Image Credit: Space.com
