First, they came for education, and then they came for the results of that education.
Ignorant fucking assholes.
What made America great you MAGA humping pricks?
NASA’s Next Major Space Telescope Is Ready to Launch. Trump Wants to Kill It and Other Vital Science — Scientific American
Amid harsh cuts, the Trump administration has proposed canceling the nearly ready-to-launch Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope..
Project status
Technicians at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center are nearing the finish line on the space agency’s newest flagship astrophysics mission. Called the *Nancy Grace Roman [*bio] Space Telescope, the eagerly awaited $3.5-billion observatory could solve the secrets of the dark universe, spot untold undiscovered worlds and light the way toward finding alien life. It only awaits final integration and testing, a short hop down to Cape Canaveral, Fla., and a longer journey to a sun-circling orbit near the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In a triumph for NASA, reliable sources say that Roman could launch as early as the fall of 2026, well ahead of its May 2027 target and potentially under budget.
*Link to NASA for her bio and interview
How
But a leaked draft of the president’s 2026 budget request, which Scientific American has reviewed, instead calls for canceling Roman.
“This is nuts. You’ve built it, and you’re not going to do the final step to finish it?” says astrophysicist David Spergel, president of the Simons Foundation and former co-chair of Roman’s science team. “That is such a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
Grim Forecast
Roman isn’t the only casualty in the president’s draft NASA budget, which is still in flux and will ultimately require congressional approval. The proposal cuts heavily into the $25-billion space agency’s science division, home to missions that include JWST, the twin Voyager probes, the Hubble Space Telescope and a fleet of Mars rovers that have colored in our understanding of the cosmos and captured imaginations worldwide for half a century.
The draft budget includes an almost 50 percent cut to heliophysics, which studies the sun and space weather, reducing it to $455 million; a more than 50 percent reduction in Earth science funding, which includes climate monitoring, taking it down to roughly $1 billion; and a 30 percent cut to planetary science and solar system exploration, resulting in $1.9 billion. The last cut kills the upcoming DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission to Venus and NASA’s beleaguered mission to bring rocks back from Mars. Notably, the document also cleaves off two thirds of the funding for NASA’s astrophysics division, which studies stars, galaxies and cosmology, dropping it to $487 million and specifying that “no funding is provided” for telescopes other than JWST and Hubble.
Fears
“If you want to take the most successful fleet of missions ever built, and the leadership that accompanies that fleet, and throw that all away, this is the budget to do it,” says another senior space scientist, speaking anonymously because of concerns about budgetary retribution from the Trump administration. “This budget is like, ‘Here is a shit sandwich with no side of pickle.’ You don’t even get the plate!”
What’s the plan here, you Orange menace?
- Ruin our greatest achievements?
- Isolate us from the rest of the world and the universe?
- Another gift for Elon?
I am beyond words for this targeted pillaging and destruction.
It is truly heartbreaking
~A