In a tweet, the president disparaged NASA’s moon mission plan that his administration had endorsed
In a head-spinning tweet, President Trump blasted NASA on Friday for its plan to return to the moon — a plan set in motion during a 2017 White House ceremony he presided over, and forcefully endorsed in March on the president’s behalf by Vice President Mike Pence, chairman of the revitalized National Space Council.
« For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon – We did that 50 years ago, » the president tweeted Friday. « They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science! »
During a March 27 meeting with NASA managers and aerospace officials at the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, Pence said the Trump administration was ordering NASA to send astronauts back to the moon by 2024, four years earlier than had been planned.
« At the direction of the president of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years, » Pence said.
