Deviating from his previous lunar - bring policy , President Donald Trump announced Friday that space campaign made by NASA should manoeuvre vindicated of the Moon and or else maneuver toward the outer reaches of space , “ including Mars ( of which the Moon is a part ) " .
The Tweet comes just hours after NASAannouncedit will be taking tourer to the International Space Station in a new initiative to bring commercial business opportunities to low - Earth orbit – and on the same day that Trump - appointed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstinetoldaudience members at the International Space Development Conference that “ the very first insurance directive of the President pronounce , ‘ we ’re going to go back to the moon . ’ ”
When the president state that the Moon “ is a part ” of Mars , he may have been referring to the connexion between the two under NASA’sExplore Moon to Mars Mission , of which NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has said would be accelerate by Trump to “ riposte to the Moon and to land humans on the surface again by 2024 " .
“ We will go with innovative raw engineering science and system to search more placement across the aerofoil than was ever think possible , ” hesaidat the time . “ This sentence , when we go to the Moon , we will last out . And then we will use what we memorise on the Moon to take the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars . ”
The delegacy has since mother a lot of plug . So much , in fact , that less than a month ago the president evenproposedspending an additional $ 1.6 billion to check its success . Rewind to March , when Vice President Mike Pence say that “ President Trump and our entire administration believe that it is time to tug onward to new horizons and unexampled destination . ”
“ And as President Trump said , we will return ‘ American astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972 for long - term exploration and use , ’ Pencesaidin Alabama last March . “ And as he said , not only to , quote , ‘ found our flag and go away our footprint[s ] , ” but to “ establish a initiation [ on the Moon ] for an eventual mission to Mars . ’ ”
So , what ’s alter ? That is n’t entirely clean-cut . The White House has not yet responded to IFLScience ’s petition for a statement on their future plans .
