Trump Signs NASA Bill Aimed at Sending People to Mars

Manned mission to Mars and beyond: Donald Trump signs NASA bill to send humans to Red Planet.

Washington, 24 Jumadil Akhir 1438, 23 March 2017 (MINA) – President Trump just signed a bill authorizing $19.5 billion in funding for NASA — the first such authorization bill for the space agency in seven years.

The bill more or less aligns with the budget blueprint Trump laid out last week, news agencies reported.

NASA won’t face the same cuts as other science and medical agencies, which stand to lose huge portions of their budget under the president’s proposal.

The bill is the first NASA authorization bill to reach a U.S. president’s desk since 2010. Trump signed the bill into law today (March 21) during a televised ceremony in the Oval Office. He was joined by NASA astronauts Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Chris Cassidy, who presented the commander in chief with a NASA flight jacket.

Following the signing, Vice President Mike Pence announced that the White House will re-establish a National Space Council. The first iteration of a presidential space council was formed in 1958 under Dwight D. Eisenhower, and was dissolved in 1973.

A new council was formed in 1989 under President George H. W. Bush, only to be dissolved again in 1993. The council has served to advise the president on space issues, but its value has been debated by spaceflight policy experts.

Pence will chair the council, and he said that its members will include representatives from both NASA and the private sector.

Currently, NASA astronauts travel to the International Space Station aboard the Russia Soyuz spacecraft, which launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Sending humans to Mars by the 2030s remains NASA’s long-term goal, and Congress will continue to fund the construction of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule for that mission.   (T/RS5/RS1)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)