November 2016
Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said.
3 June 2019
Over the last two months, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has repeatedly said the agency's ambitious new Artemis plan for sending humans to the Moon in 2024 will not require raiding other areas of its budget, such as its broad array of science programs, technology research, or aeronautics work.
However, that may be exactly what happens. On Friday, during a meeting of NASA's Advisory Council, the agency's senior human spaceflight official characterized the challenge of paying for a plan to accelerate human landings on the Moon from the late 2020s to 2024, as Vice President Mike Pence has directed the agency to do.
In the myth, for the sin of gazing on her naked beauty as she bathed in a forest pool, Artemis turned the hunter Actaeon into a stag, in which form he was then promptly torn apart by his own hounds. Let’s hope the moon goddess has an equal portion of poetic justice in store for Trump—rather more deserving than the hapless Actaeon—for taking her name in vain.