The future of U.S. space exploration and NASA-funded science is up in the air as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to office.
“There’s just so many question marks,” says political scientist Victoria Samson. Where will humans go in space, and when? What will SpaceX billionaire and close presidential adviser Elon Musk’s influence be over NASA and space policy? What does the nomination of billionaire space tourist Jared Isaacman to lead NASA mean?
“If I have one thing to say, everything is unclear,” says Samson, who is in the Washington, D.C., office of the Secure World Foundation, a nonprofit space sustainability organization. “Anything could happen.”
Space scientists are making predictions based on things Trump and his allies have said in the past. Naming Isaacman as his pick to be the next NASA administrator reflects priorities for space exploration that had already been telegraphed during the election: getting boots on the ground of another world, as quickly as possible.
That other world is probably the moon. But it could be Mars, if some in Trump’s orbit get their way. And while human and commercial spaceflight will probably get a boost in the next administration, it’s less clear what the future holds for astronomy and pure space science.
Here’s what Science News will be watching in the coming years.
How (and when) will NASA return humans to the moon?
Every time there’s a change in presidential administrations, there’s a corresponding change in destination for humans in space. In the early 2000s, George W. Bush directed NASA to land astronauts on the moon again “no later than 2020.” In 2010, Barack Obama cancelled that program and aimed humans at asteroids instead (SN: 4/15/10). In 2017, Trump scrapped that plan and swung back toward the moon with the
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