Geoff Brumfiel
The International Space Station serves as an orbiting scientific laboratory where astronauts conduct experiments. The Trump administration has proposed cutting its budget by roughly $500 million and reducing research at the outpost.AP/Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service
When Casey Dreier saw President Trump's proposed budget for NASA, he couldn't believe the numbers.
"This is the worst NASA budget I've seen in my lifetime," says Dreier, the chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that advocates for space exploration.
The budget proposes deep cuts for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, which oversees everything from telescopes peering deep into space to robotic probes exploring planets like Mars. Many of these projects cost billions of dollars to build and launch, but the budget cuts are so deep "that it will require NASA to turn off active spacecraft that are producing good science for pennies on the dollar for what the U.S. taxpayer paid for them," Dreier says.
It's not just spacecraft — Trump's proposed budget for the federal government would switch off huge swaths of America's scientific enterprise. The National Science Foundation (NSF) would be slashed in half. The National Institutes of Health would lose $17 billion in funding. Other agencies like the Energy Department, the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would all see deep cuts totaling billions of dollars.
No comments:
Post a Comment