Research and developments is a blog for brief updates that provide a context for the burst of news concerning changes in law and politics that have an impact on science and scientists today.
The initial project of the budget request from President Donald Trump offers devastating cuts to NASA scientific research, future space missions and field centers. The draft budget request, reported by Ars Technica And The Washington Postoffers an overall reduction of 20% of the NASA budget, from around 25 billion to $ 20 billion.
“This is an event in terms of extinction for the science of NASA”, ” Casey Dreierhead of space policy for planetary society, says The Washington Post. “It puts an unnecessarily functional and productive scientific missions and cancels new missions under construction, wasting billions of dollars of taxpayers in the process. It is neither effective nor intelligent budgeting. “
The overwhelming majority of cuts would come from the Directorate of the Scientific Mission (SMD) of NASA, which would face a drop of more than 50% of $ 7.5 billion to only $ 3.9 billion. This division includes all planetary sciences, earth sciences, astrophysics, heliophysics and biological research and physical sciences.
THE Budget request project offers A reduction of 68% in astrophysics (from 1.5 billion to $ 487 million), a reduction of more than 43% in heliophysics (from $ 805 million to $ 455 million), a reduction of 30% in planetary science (from 2.7 billion dollars to $ 1.9 billion), and 53% in earth sciences ($ 2.2 billion to $ 1.9 billion), and 53% to earth science (from $ 2.2 billion to 1.033333333333 billion).
The proposal retains the financing of Hubble space telescope and the James Webb space telescopeBut kills funding for the next Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescopewhich is fully assembled, on the budget and within the time to launch in 2 years.
The chopped are also the financing of the Davinci + mission in Venus and the joint mission of March sample with the European space agency, which was a Budget point For years.
The NASA Earth Sciences Division within SMD is home to satellite programs and the NASA land climate. Combined with continuous attacks on NOAA and the National Weather Service, such steep budgetary reductions in NASA earth science would almost eliminate the ability of the United States to study climate change and protect people from increasingly serious climatic impacts.
The draft budget also seems to try to force the closure of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which employs more than 10,000 civil servants and entrepreneurs.
“NASA Goddard and the scientific missions of NASA are essential to discover the secrets of the universe and the planet on which we live and have a direct impact on our leadership in technological innovation and our national security,” wrote the American senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD.) In a statement. Van Hollen is the classification member of the subcommittee of credits on trade, justice, science and related agencies.
“This is a fully unbalanced budget proposal,” noted Van Hollen. “I will fight dental and nails against these cuts and to protect the critical work in progress at NASA Goddard.”
On April 9, Jared Isaacman, Trump candidate for the NASA administrator, said in his hearing in the Senate that he had no knowledge of the planned budget cuts at NASA and had no current intention to cancel the existing programs. Notably, He did not commit To keep all NASA field centers open, there is multiple chances of doing so. Isaacman repeatedly stressed that he was determined to ensure American domination in the spatial race against China, which also seeks to put humans on the Moon and on Mars, as well as to extend its program of science of exploration throughout the solar system. These budget cuts would make this objective much more difficult to achieve.
The project containing these proposed reductions, called “reaautom documents Rumors of these cuts circulated in early March). NASA generally has 72 hours to examine documents and submit calls with justifications, which are integrated into the budget request from the official president. If it is adopted as it is, the budget request from this president for NASA would be the lowest (adjusted for inflation) since 1961, before the start of the Apollo program.
“NASA Goddard and the scientific missions of NASA are essential to discover the secrets of the universe and the planet on which we live and have a direct impact on our leadership in technological innovation and our national security,” according to Van Hollen. “To intestate NASA Goddard and the Directorate of the Scientific Mission of NASA, the management of the mission is not only short -sighted, it is dangerous.”
—Kimberly Mme Cartier (@ astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Editor
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