‘Nasa is being savaged' — budget cuts and politics put space exploration in jeopardy
I t put a man on the moon, sent a rover to Mars and unlocked some of the greatest secrets of the universe. But for all Nasa's past achievements, team spirit is in the doldrums.
'It's not a happy time to work at Nasa right now,' said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy for The Planetary Society. 'There's very low morale and a huge amount of uncertainty.'
The agency has been thrust into chaos by President Trump's proposed budget cuts, his rift with his former ally Elon Musk, and a U-turn on the nomination of Jared Isaacman as Nasa administrator.
It should have been a time for optimism. Nasa is preparing to put humans back on the lunar surface for the first time since 1972 — and this time it was to be no fleeting trip. It was to include moonbases and research stations in which astronauts would live and work, and a permanent space station orbiting the moon called the Lunar Gateway.
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