Image (Credit): Artist’s rending of the Perseverance Mars rover on the Martian surface. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
”Based on data from the last 20 years, we found that if an extraterrestrial intelligence were in a location that could observe the alignment of Earth and Mars, there’s a 77% chance that they would be in the path of one of our transmissions — orders of magnitude more likely than being in a random position at a random time.”
Image (Credit): Presentation to students at the Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center. (Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center).
“This is an unacceptable and drastic step that will have a significant impact on local employees, residents, and visitors…My staff and I are in contact with NASA to better understand the reasoning behind this reported decision as it is contradictory to the proposed House budget. Wallops has long been a vital part of our community, and we will do everything we can to support the work that’s done there and the people who work there.”
-Statement by Congresswoman Jen Kiggans (R-VA), as quoted in The Virginian-Pilot, after NASA announced plans to close the visitor center at the Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast. The visitor center has a NASA museum visited by students on field trips as well as the general public. It also acts as a viewing location for rocket launches from the site, which includes unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station. Surprisingly, the White House did not bother keeping even the Republican congressional members in the loop on these cuts. Cutting back on public outreach is a sure way to undermine support for US space missions.
“Although Congress has not completed the appropriations process for FY 2026, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has already disregarded Congress’s constitutional authority to direct government spending, unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated NASA FY 2025 funds. Before Congress had approved a single appropriations bill, the Trump Administration and OMB Director Russell Vought directed federal agencies to freeze over $100 million in appropriated funds for science initiatives at NASA. Amidst the threat of looming cuts, NASA has already lost over 2,000 senior-level employees at NASA centers in Maryland, Texas, Florida, Virginia, Alabama, and Ohio. These losses will deprive NASA of key expertise on science, human space flight, and mission support. In blatant violation of law and complete disregard for the authority of Congress, the President’s budget request has already done significant damage to American space exploration and innovation.”
-A statement in an August 1, 2025 letter from six Democratic US Senators to the acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy pertaining to ongoing and planned cuts at the agency. The Senators requested responses to six questions, including “How does NASA intend to accomplish its mission of leading in space when the proposed funding cuts will gut world-renowned missions like Mar Sample Return (MSR) and trigger the mass layoff of employees with decades of institutional expertise and knowledge?” A good question.
“They simply don’t want the public to see the meticulously assembled and scientifically validated information about what climate change is already doing to our farms, forests, and fisheries, as well as to storms, floods, wildfires, and coast property — and about how all those damages will grow in the absence of concerted remedial action.”
–Statement by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy, regarding NASA’s removal of national climate assessments from its website. Of course, the daily news about floods and fires will continue to keep us aware of ongoing terra-forming here on planet Earth. You can also find information about the last National Climate Assessment at this USDA site, for now at least.
“You’re losing the managerial and core technical expertise of the agency…What’s the strategy and what do we hope to achieve here?”
-Comment by Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, regarding recent news that 2,145 senior-ranking NASA employees will be departing NASA as part of the ongoing downsizing of the agency. It is not clear whether these cuts align with the White House’s earlier statements that it wanted to put humans on the Moon and Mars. The saying used to be measure twice, cut once. With this White House it is cut twice and toss out the measuring tape.
Our Awesome Universe 