Trump signs NASA bill, ponders sending Congress to space

The Washington Posts and Phys.org  have reported that President Trump has signed a bill authorizing $19.5 billion the largest of such in seven years in funding for NASA.

Reporting further, Washington Posts said the bill more or less aligns with the budget blueprint Trump laid out the previous week. NASA won’t face the same cuts as other science and medical agencies, which stand to lose huge portions of their budget under the president’s proposal. Sending humans to Mars by the 2030s remains NASA’s long-term goal, and Congress will continue to fund the construction of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule for that mission.

President Trump after signing the $19.5bn NASA bill – image courtesy Phys.org

“I think it’s really more of a vote for stability,” said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. He noted that the passage of the last NASA authorization bill in 2010 was fairly chaotic, since it involved ending the Constellation program that would have sent astronauts to the moon.

This year’s bill left NASA’s Earth science budget untouched — for now. Earth science would see a 5 percent cut in the president’s blueprint, and Trump made clear Tuesday that he thinks NASA should be focused on deep space, not Earth.

On the 1st of March 2017, Newsxplained published the story of NASA habitable planets find and xplained it was probably about getting funding.

Inline with our analysis, the “timely find” of new sets of habitable planets seems to have helped NASA get its $19.5b budget approved!

The argument from NASA will be the need to get to Mars first in preparation for getting to the new discovered planets. Check back for updates