Nasa

Donald Trump has passed the first US law in seven years that outlines Nasa’s long-term future. It stipulates that the space agency will continue to focus on sending humans to Mars.

The president passed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017 - also known as S.442 - on March 21. The bill sets out that Nasa should be a multi-mission space agency that has a focus on putting humans on the Red planet by the mid-2030s.


Nasa's Orion mission will go further than ever before, but how will it get us to Mars and beyond? Nasa Nasa's Orion mission will go further than ever before, but how will it get us to Mars and beyond?

The bill, the result of several months’ work, requests that Nasa has a $19.5 billion (£15.5 billion) budget for the next year. The budget is likely to increase in coming years, however the president has proposed a $19.1 billion spending allowance for Nasa in 2018.

Read next SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will blast off tomorrow in Musk's most ambitious launch yet SpaceX's Falcon Heavy will blast off tomorrow in Musk's most ambitious launch yet

Upon signing the bill, Trump said he was “honoured” and Nasa’s acting administrator Robert Lightfoot said the bipartisan Congress group has made “thoughtful consideration” in formulating the bill.

As Ars Technica reports, a large portion of Trump’s excitement for the space bill is to focus on jobs. Trump also made clear that he is focussed on deep space rather than near-Earth. It also states a revamped National Space Council will be formed to act as a body in between the White House and Nasa.



The ambitious project to intercept an asteroid, under the Asteroid Redirect Mission, was confirmed to be shut down. The American Astronomical Society has a breakdown of how the money will be spent.


However, the document largely keeps Nasa on the same path it has been on for a few years. It continues to keep the Orion mission under development and the plan to explore space until humans get to Mars.

The bill’s section on Mars says Nasa will develop a roadmap for the journey to the planet and provide this before December 1, 2017. A human space flight mission by Nasa to Mars should launch in 2033, the act says.

There is, at least, one man who isn’t happy about this. Responding to a tweet from Recode founder Kara Swisher, Musk said he is ‘not smiling’ about the bill being passed. “This bill changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing,” Musk said in response. “Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars.”

Read next Elon Musk is revealing his electric truck tonight - here's what we know Elon Musk is revealing his electric truck tonight - here's what we know

He continued: “Perhaps there will be some future bill that makes a difference for Mars, but this is not it”.


In order to see this embed, you must give consent to Social Media cookies. Open my cookie preferences. I am not. This bill changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing. Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 22, 2017

Previous reports from Politico, based on internal documents created by the transition team assigned to Nasa, show Trump's advisers wanted the agency to put humans back on the Moon by 2020. In particular, Nasa would be tasked with putting more resources into increasing human presence in the area between Earth and the Moon, known as the cislunar region, as opposed to trying to get to Mars or explore further into the Solar System. The primary goal being “the large-scale economic development of space”.

The advisers added that Nasa's strategy should be to prioritise economic growth rather than exploration, which, “if done correctly, could create a trillion-dollar per year space economy, dominated by America”. This was the thinking behind the human spaceflight constellation programme, known as CxP, which started in 2005 but was cancelled in 2010. Constellation had the goal of completing the ISS, returning to the Moon by 2020 and ultimately sending a crewed flight to Mars.

The future of Nasa: what's next for the agency, its robots and its plans to get to Mars Nasa The future of Nasa: what's next for the agency, its robots and its plans to get to Mars

Read next Everyone needs to stop paying attention to Elon Musk’s tweets Everyone needs to stop paying attention to Elon Musk’s tweets

As part of these changes, Congress approved replacing the shuttle programme with the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion space mission. One of Nasa's most ambitious plans ever, Orion will take humans into deep space before bringing them home again and it could finally help us explore the far reaches of our Solar System. Planning, design and construction of the spacecraft has been underway for more than a decade, with the first successful test of its crew-carrying vehicle in December 2014. This doesn't come cheap, though.

In October, Obama reiterated his Martian ambitions, saying he wanted to start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history and, by the mid-2030s, sending humans to orbit Mars followed by a later Mars landing. This proved popular with voters (75 per cent polled on the initial plans called for Nasa’s budget to be doubled to fund such initiatives) but added a financial strain on the agency.

A month later, Obama reaffirmed his views, Nasa put out a request for information (RFI) seeking solutions from "industry and academia to maximise the long-term efficiency and sustainability" of its exploration programs. Put simply, Nasa was asking for help cutting the $3 billion costs currently spent on SLS, Orion and related technologies.


In the S.442 document a specific section relates to the SLS and Orion. It says the SLS and Orion have seen “steady progress” and that development of the technologies is the “most practical approach to reaching the Moon, Mars, and beyond”.

Speaking at an October rally in Florida, Trump said he fully intended to “free Nasa from the restriction of serving primarily as a logistics agency for low-Earth orbit activity.

“Instead, we will refocus its mission on space exploration. Under a Trump Administration, Florida and America will lead the way into the stars.” He later added: “human exploration of our entire Solar System by the end of this century should be Nasa’s focus and goal.”