President Donald Trump's proposed cuts to NASA's budget could throw away decades of research and leave the universe's greatest mysteries unsolved forever, a chorus of scientists warn.
The Trump administration intends to slash the space agency's budget by 24 percent – to $18.8 billion, the lowest figure since 2015 – and those cuts would decimate space and Earth science missions, with a 53 percent drop in funding since what they received last year, reported The Guardian.
“An extinction-level event is when something like an asteroid hits Earth, and life that has been otherwise perfectly well-functioning, healthy ecosystems that have been balanced and functioning, are wiped out in large numbers," said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society. "That’s functionally what this budget is."
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The Planetary Society has been rallying lawmakers to oppose the budget, which scientists say would end research that has been ongoing for years and halt new discoveries.
“Projects that are functioning, that are on budget and on time, that are already paid for and returning good science, would be decimated," Dreier said. "You’d see missions turned off mid-flight, extended missions put into hibernation or left to tumble in space. You’d see projects that could launch next year canceled summarily, and hundreds if not thousands of scientists and engineers and others laid off due to loss of research money and technology investments."
The cuts could end NASA's search for signs of life on Mars and kill the Davinci+ and Veritas projects announced during Joe Biden's presidency and would have sent spacecraft to study Venus for the first time since 1989.
“What this does is turn off the spigot of discovery, the investments we’re making now that are going to pay off in five years, 10 years, maybe 20 years, that may fundamentally reshape our understanding of our place in the cosmos, our origins," Dreier said.
“Is Mars habitable for life, is Venus?" the scientist added. "How many Earth-like planets are there? Those types of questions will not be answered because we just decided not to answer them. We’re abandoning literally decades of debate and discussion and justification.”
Billions of dollars have already been spent on some projects on the chopping block, and Dreier asked why the administration would throw away research that has already been paid off.
“It’s just like we’re giving up and turning away. Instead of looking up we’re turning down and inwards,” Dreier said. “This is a budget of retrenchment, this is a budget of retreat. It’s basically the equivalent of hunching over a cellphone and swiping through pictures of the Grand Canyon while you’re sitting at the edge of it in reality and not even bothering to look.”
Other experts say the administration is sending a clear message that science is no longer important to the U.S., and scientists say that could drive away researchers to other countries.
“Is the U.S. going to be left behind?" said Ehud Behar, a high-energy astrophysicist at Technion- Israel Institute of Technology. "It might take time, this is not going to happen tomorrow, but China has enough people, they have enough scientists. If they are going to invest much more in science and technology development, they’re going to be more competitive, and they’re going to achieve things within five to 10 years that today maybe only NASA can achieve.”
