President-Elect Has Said More Emphasis Will Go To Deep Space Exploration

President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign that his plans for NASA would include more deep space exploration and less emphasis on Earth science, and that has employees at Alabama's Marshall Space Flight Center feeling encouraged.

One of the things President Obama did early in his first term was to cut the Constellation program being developed in Huntsville, AL, according to a report on www.al.com. The program accounted for about 500 NASA employees and 2000 contractors, and was to support then-President George W. Bush's plans for a lunar base and exploration of Mars. Only the NASA employees kept their jobs when the program was cancelled.

Obama cut the program because it was found to be behind schedule and over budget, and he prefered a more Earth-science mission for the space agency focused on climate change. He also spent billions on the commercial space flight programs with SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and others.

The Constellation program was scaled back and re-dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS). The fight to fund SLS was led by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), and some analysts believe that Shelby's re-election will have more on an impact on Huntsville's contributions to NASA than will the election of Trump.

But Trump has said, albeit through surrogates, that he wants to refocus NASA on deep space exploration and not climate science. There is talk of a return to the Moon as a jumping-off place for manned Mars expeditions.

For his part, space is not yet a priority for Trump, though he did say in a Tweet during the campaign that he was "sad to see what @BarackObama has done with NASA. He has gutted the program and made us dependent on the Russians."

Trump has not yet selected a new Administrator for NASA to replace Charles Bolden.

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