With Donald Trump as the new President of the USA, it is not clear what it means for the future of NASA. Though Trump has talked extensively about immigrants, its policy towards the Middle East and Russia, he has spoken little about what will be his course of action about space endeavours. However, his advisors are hinting that he is more interested in manned deep space exploration and not much on researching the Earth and climate science. Private players will continue to be an integral part of space policy.
Trump’s advisers hint that the focus will be more on Deep Space exploration and Earth-centric activities will be handled by other competitive agencies. The focus of NASA will be henceforth to Human Exploration of the entire Solar System by the end of this century. Trump’s NASA transition team will be headed by Robert S. Walker, former chairman of the House Science Committee. Walker adds that NASA will be in for a complete rearrangement and all Earth-based science will be taken over by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. This will help free the much-needed funds and also help NASA focus on its primary goal which is deep space exploration.
In the past NASA has launched some Earth Observation Satellites like the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCVR) and the Jason satellites, which obtained valuable data about the planet’s climate, space weather, sea level changes and much more. It is not clear if Trump will completely do away with the Earth Science Division, but it is a distinct possibility.
The biggest take away from the Obama Government has been a public-private partnership in the space industry. NASA has partnered with commercial companies to complete the agencies exploration needs. An example of this is the SpaceX program which NASA uses to ferry supplies to the ISS. With the curtains on the Shuttle program, NASA had to rely on Russian rockets to replenish supplies to ISS. The private players like SpaceX will play a greater role in the coming future in deep space ventures like sending humans to Mars.