President Donald Trump has instructed NASA to send American astronauts back to the Moon and eventually to Mars, but has eliminated earlier dates for such missions.
“This is a major step toward that exciting future and of bringing back America’s proud destiny in space,” Trump said Monday at a White House reception, where he it’s a name to NASA’s new guidelines. “And so many other claims, including a military claim, have to have a place. So we’re the leader, and we’re going to stay as a director, and we’re going to grow many times over. ”
White House deputy news secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement that the new policy reflects recommendations from the National Space Council, the Trump White House advisory panel that was appointed earlier this year. The White House did not provide details on how NASA’s work to return to the Moon would be funded, or whether any routine programs would be cut.
The directive, which was released later in the day, will change one paragraph in an 18 – page memo issued by President Barack Obama in 2010.
Obama had called on NASA to begin “off-moon crew missions, including orbiting astronauts” by 2025 and “orbiters to Mars” by the 2030s. Trump’s directive instructs NASA to “allow human expansion throughout the solar system,” “return humans to the Moon,” followed by “human missions to Mars and other destinations.” But he did not set any dates for the missions.
Desires scale back
NASA said in a statement that the new policy would divert its mission to send humans to asteroids.
It is not uncommon for recent presidents to recapture the intentions of their ancestors for space exploration. President George W. Bush had called for NASA to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, a mission that ended with concerns about costs.
“This is the first step in a very long process,” John Logsdon, founder and former director of the Institute of Space Policy at George Washington University, said in an interview. “The next crucial step is: Is there money to return to the Moon in the budget? It’s 45 years since we went to the Moon, and a lot of people have a lot of ideas. “
Marco Caceres, a space analyst with defense and aerospace consulting firm Teal Group, said “presidential instructions to NASA” have little meat on it, as no specific funding proposals have been taken since the Apollo era, when America was racing to hit the Soviet Union in space.
“I don’t think an order to NASA is going to do anything unless it is accompanied by a significant increase in NASA’s budget – and in particular I mean a doubling or triple or quadruple budget NASA, ”Caceres said.
Russian independence
The U.S. abandoned the space program in 2011, three decades after its launch. During the program race, the five shuttles flew 135 missions. Since the program ended, the U.S. has had to rely on Russian rockets, at a cost of $ 70 million per capital.
In September, Trump nominated Rep. Jim Bridenstine, a Republican from Oklahoma, to be NASA’s next administrator. Bridenstine, who, if proven to be the first elected official to lead the organization, is known as an advocate for bringing private companies such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, into activity. NASA.
SpaceX launches rockets for customers including NASA, commercial satellite operators and American military. On Wednesday, the close-knit company was slated to launch a Falcon 9 rocket and a Dragon spacecraft full of cargo goods to be at the International Space Station, in the company’s 17th flight of the year. Musk, 46, attended Trump’s early advisory councils until June, when he parted ways with the administration over Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement.
After the shuttle program ended, NASA turned to private business to fill the gap. Both SpaceX and Boeing have billion-dollar contracts to send American astronauts to the space station, with the first major tests of the slate technology for 2018. Musk has also announced plans to pay paying tourists put on flights around the Moon.
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based start-up company that graduated from Carnegie Mellon University, praised Trump’s nomination, urging NASA to bring robotic lords to the Moon beginning in 2020 before anyone returns.
The Spaceflight Commercial Alliance, which represents companies such as SpaceX and Virgin Galactic Ltd., praised Trump’s action in an emailed press release.
“The U.S. commercial space industry has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in private capital to develop innovative capabilities for lunar transportation, operations and resource use,” added Eric Stallmer, the group’s president. the administration should direct NASA to make better use of that. private investment to achieve management objectives.
Featuring Jennifer Jacobs and Dana Hull, supported by Justin Bachman, Alan Levin and Jennifer Epstein