Trump Planning Brutal Cuts to NASA: "Extinction-Level Event for NASA Science"

The Trump administration is planning to cut NASA's science budget nearly in half, according to an early budget proposal to Congress. As the Washington Post reports, NASA's Science Mission Directorate's current $7.3 billion budget could be cut down to a mere $3.9 billion. While the proposal has yet to be formally submitted to Congress, the slashed budget would deal a devastating blow to the space agency's ongoing and future missions, including its next major space telescope and Mars Sample Return mission. NASA's $2.2 billion Earth Science budget would be more than halved under the budget proposal, while planetary science would drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion. It wouldn't just be a major step back; the move could prove to be counterintuitively expensive. "This is an extinction-level event for NASA science," said space advocacy group Planetary Society chief of space policy Casey Dreier in a statement. "It needlessly terminates functional, productive science missions and cancel ... Read full article.