Trump Trying to Cancel NASA's Successor to the James Webb Space Telescope, Even Though It's Already Built

According to an early budget proposal that leaked earlier this year, the Trump administration is planning to cut NASA's science budget nearly in half, in what critics are calling an "extinction-level event" for research at the space agency. As Scientific American reports, pending Congressional approval, the budget would have a mind-numbingly painful and unnecessary result: the effective cancellation of NASA's follow-up to its groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. For years, scientists have been hard at work on the observatory, nearing final integration and testing, before moving it to Cape Canaveral, Florida for launch into space. But the latest budget proposal, if approved by Congress, could be a death knell for the already-constructed space telescope. "This is nuts," Simons Foundation president and former co-chair of Roman’s science team David Spergel told SciAm. "You’ve built it, and you’re not going to do the final step to finish it?" ... Read full article.