“In times when there has been much news about all the things that divide our nation, there has been noticeable bipartisan support for this work,” Bolden wrote. Because of that, “I think we can all be confident that the new Trump administration and future administrations after that will continue the visionary course on which President Barack Obama has set us.”

Some projects, like the James Webb Space Telescope, are safer than others under a Trump administration. Webb, an $8.8 billion enterprise, has been in the works for two decades and employs hundreds of people.

Trump, like most presidential candidates, said little about space policy on the campaign trail. Most voters want to hear about the economy, not Europa. “Right now, we have bigger problems—you understand that?” Trump told a 10-year-old boy at a campaign event in New Hampshire last November, when the child asked about NASA. “We’ve got to fix our potholes. You know, we don’t exactly have a lot of money.”

For now, imagining space policy under a Trump administration is akin to reading tea leaves. The same goes for future funding for NASA, which could be sapped to help pay for completely unrelated programs, like large tax cuts or expensive infrastructure repairs. A new NASA administrator won’t be named until next year, and, barring any foreshadowing tweets, Trump could wait, as Obama did, until his second year in office before formally announcing his space-policy agenda. But Trump’s space policy has already begun to take shape, and there’s plenty to divine. His team for NASA began meeting with agency employees at the start of this month. His picks for top administration jobs so far, combined with his biggest pro-space allies in Congress, suggest a future that’s good for solar-system exploration, but bad for climate research.

The NASA’s earth sciences division, which studies climate change and environmental conditions on Earth, is perhaps at greatest risk. In an October op-ed in SpaceNews, a pair of Trump advisers wrote that “NASA should be focused primarily on deep-space activities rather than Earth-centric work that is better handled by other agencies.” The agency, they said, focuses too much on “politically correct environmental monitoring.” The division has seen increases in funding in the last eight years, but Republicans in Congress have proposed cuts at every turn. With both the White House and Congress in Republican hands, space-policy experts are bracing for significant losses. One of the authors of the op-ed, Bob Walker, a former chairman of the House committee on science, space and technology, said last month Trump's decisions surrounding NASA “will be based upon solid science, not politicized science,” like climate change.

The same op-ed dismissed the concept of rocket launch systems that are completely bankrolled by the taxpayer money, arguing instead for the investment of reusable systems developed by private companies like SpaceX and Orbital ATK. The authors were referring to the Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket Congress instructed NASA to build in 2011 to someday launch astronauts to Mars. Greg Autry, a professor at the University of Southern California and one of the members of Trump's transition team for NASA, has criticized the SLS, saying it lacks "both innovation and a mission." He has proposed cutting funding for the program altogether and supporting private-sector developers. Many scientists and the Obama administration agree, and the president has proposed cuts to the program. The SLS is a young project, with construction starting in 2014. But the system has staunch supporters in Congress, especially among Republicans who represent states where the system is being developed. Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, the Republican senators from Alabama, have fought cuts proposed by the Obama administration. Sessions is also Trump’s pick for attorney general.