US President-elect Donald Trump is set to slash Nasa's budget for monitoring climate change and instead set a goal of sending humans to the edge of the solar system by the end of the century, and possibly back to the moon.

Mr Trump, who has called climate change a "Chinese hoax", is believed to want to focus the agency on far-reaching, big banner goals in deep space rather than "Earth-centric climate change spending".

According to Bob Walker, who has advised Mr Trump on space policy, Nasa has been reduced to "a logistics agency concentrating on space station resupply and politically correct environmental monitoring".

Mr Walker, a former congressman who chaired President George W. Bush's Commission on the Future of the US Aerospace Industry, told The Telegraph: "We would start by having a stretch goal of exploring the entire solar system by the end of the century.

"You stretch your technology experts and create technologies that wouldn't otherwise be needed. I think aspirational goals are a good thing. Fifty years ago it was the ability to go to the moon."

Nasa's climate change role in the firing line

This year Nasa's Earth Science Division received $1.92 billion in funding, up nearly 30 per cent from the previous year.