U.S. President Donald Trump has signed into law a bill to increase the budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), maintain the agency’s earth science program, and add human exploration of Mars as a goal.
The new law increases NASA’s budget for 2018 by $19.5 billion.
Trump said the law will reinforce NASA’s core mission of human space exploration while continuing to transition activities to private aerospace companies. “I hope they will pay us a lot of money,” Trump said in an Oval Office signing ceremony attended by a bi-partisan group of lawmakers.
The new law also directs the agency to manage programs to help get humans to other destinations.
A manned mission to Mars had been widely viewed as NASA’s next great challenge. The agency is expected to develop new technology to achieve the mission by relying heavily on private aviation companies.
SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, is scheduled to launch an unmanned spaceship to Mars as soon as 2018.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday criticized NASA for aiming to put astronauts back on the moon by 2024 and urged the space agency to focus instead on "much bigger" initiatives like going to Mars, undercutting his previous support for the lunar initiative. "For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT…
The U.S. space agency NASA aspires to land humans on the moon every year for 12 consecutive years, Administrator Bill Nelson testified to a congressional committee Wednesday in support of a request to boost the agency’s fiscal 2022 budget.Nelson acknowledged to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology that…
A budget proposal by the Trump administration in March outlines a commitment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) effort to send astronauts to Mars. About $3.7 billion is earmarked for development of the Space Launch System and the Orion capsule, crucial parts of NASA’s effort to send humans…
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