Will Trump goto Mars? Nasa’s nervous wait
by Stuart Clark from on (#23ZB3)
The president-elect's priorities for the US space agency are of crucial importance for Earth as well as for future space exploration
In Nasa language it's called a pivot. It's a policy change, a U-turn or a departure from a goal set by the previous US president. Until the election of Donald Trump, space insiders and even Nasa itself had a pretty good idea what, under a Hillary Clinton presidency, that pivot was going to be. It wasn't going to be popular but it was necessary.
People had been whispering it for more than a year. Even as the Nasa PR machine talked endlessly about "the journey to Mars", those in the know understood that it was little more than a pipe dream. Following the election, a "transition team" would be sent to take stock at Nasa, and the agency's goals would gradually pivot away from Mars and to the moon.
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