On May 2, the Trump administration announced its intention to impose massive cuts on the Directorate of Sciences of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), reducing its budget by $ 7.3 billion in 2025 $ 3.8 billion During the financial year2026. These cuts will almost certainly lead to the abandonment of the Rover Curiosity, the Hubble space telescope, interstellar Voyager and New Horizon probes, among others, and derail almost all the plans for future missions of American planetary exploration and astronomy. Among the cancellations will be the Roman space telescope, built at a cost of 4 billion dollars and in the process of final assembly in preparation for the launch next year, and the mission of return of Mars samples. The webb space telescope, launched just a few years ago and which recently detected A potential biosignature In the atmosphere of an exoplanet in orbit around a star at 124 light years away, its operations will be greatly reduced.
NASA’s reductions in the NASA Science Directorate are part of a global oblique bar of 24% of the space agency budget from 24.8 billion to 18.8 billion dollars. Some of the other cancellations of the proposed program were justifiable. The garnish of this list was the unnecessary gateway to the lunar orbit, a space station proposed to put in orbit around the Moon, whose incorporation in mission plans would have imposed only costs and additional complexities on any lunar exploration program. The LLS heavy lifting system and the Orion capsule were cut. It is sad, because these systems could have had large careers if they had been developed in a timely manner when they were offered decades ago. (I was a member of the team of Martin Marietta who made the conceptual conception of what is now SLS in 1988.) but while offering alternatives to Elon Musk spacecraft and dragon capsules, these systems are obsolete and too expensive.
But the Space Science program cuts have no meaning. During the last half-century, the Directorate of Space Sciences, whose budget oscillated between 20 and 25% of the NASA total, was responsible for almost 100% of the agency’s real achievements. However, out of the $ 6 billion to reduce NASA $ 25 billion budget, $ 3.5 billion will be covered by space science management, reducing its budget by $ 48% of $ 3.8 billion dollars, while the unproductive parties will only make a budget reduction of approximately 13%.
Trump allies are circulating a number of lines to bring conservatives to align themselves in favor of the ax work on science. The first of them is the assertion that the Directorate of Sciences should be cut because its satellites of observation of the Earth are supposed to be a tool for the left -wing alarmists. It’s just false. The fact is that the scientists of the NASA land have been completely ready to let their discoveries fall where they can, going as far as to show That carbon dioxide emissions have accelerated world rates of plant growth by almost 20% since 1985.
Another argument is that we do not need the mission to return from the Mars sample, or any other program of robotic missions Mars Explorations which could be carried out in its place, because SpaceX will launch its own starship robotic mission in March in 2026, followed by a human mission in 2028.
This line is wrong, and not only because these promises are completely unrealistic. The biggest problem is that in the past two years, Musk has redefined in hyper-partisan terms. If the human program Mars must remain considered as a Trump-Musk hobby, it will certainly be canceled as soon as the political fortune of war changes. The certainty of this programmatic death sentence would be tripled if the Musk’s program was marked by the Cain brand, being born from the blood of the NASA assassinated exploration program.
In fact, if the Humans to Mars initiative is to survive the administration of Trump, it must become the American program, not the musk program. This can only be done if it becomes a welcome ally, rather than a hated enemy, of American space science.
The technical path to make it a reality is obvious. While A Robotic Starship Mars Landing Mission Cannot be launched in 2026 (Becuse that wow not only require starship reaching orbit, but the development of tanker starships to refuel it in space) it is desivable – with a great deal of hard work and luck – that such a mission 2028. If Starship’s Massive Payload Delivery Capability Were Devoted To Land A Robotic Expedition Expedition, Consistant Say of 20 Science Rovers and 20 Exploration Helicopters, with a well-instrumented scientific laboratory installed in the Starship itself to which samples could be brought near and far for the examination, the scientific return, chart. Hundreds of investigative teams with instruments from each description, including forestry, penetrating grounds on the ground and life detection experiences could participate. It would win the program Enthusiastic bipartisan support of the scientific community.
The vessels could also be used to launch a new generation of space telescopes, much more powerful than Hubble or Webb. But doing such things requires developing the budget for space science to produce the multitude of Rovers, helicopters, telescopes and other fascinating useful charges including the delivery of the advent of the heavy load at low cost and the landing capacity of the heavy payload will soon allow. But instead, the administration chooses to interrupt such possibilities.
It should also be noted that by leading the world in space exploration, NASA has attracted some of the best talents from all other nations to our side. Many of these young scientists and engineers have continued to create industries, extend our economy and considerably strengthen our national defense. With the effective termination of the NASA space science program, this great flow of genius is sure to dry.
The Space Science program is not just the jewel of the Crown of NASA. It is the Gothic cathedral of our time, carrying the banner of the highest ideal of our society – the search for truth through science. The decision to destroy is a crime against science and civilization. It must be reversed.
Dr. Robert Zubrin, an aerospace engineer, is president of Mars Society and author of 12 books, including more recently The New World on Mars: What We Can Create on the Red Planet.
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