The Trump administration wants NASA out of the International Space Station by 2025, and private businesses running the place instead.
Under President Donald Trump's 2019 proposed budget released Monday, U.S. government funding for the space station would end by 2025. The government would set aside $150 million to encourage commercial development and use future savings to aim for the moon.
FILE - In this Dec. 12, 2006, file photo, made available by NASA, astronaut Robert L. Curbeam Jr., left, and European Space Agency astronaut Christer Fuglesang, participate in a space walk during construction of the International Space Station. (NASA via AP, File)
Many space experts and legislators are expressing concern. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who rocketed into orbit in 1986, said "turning off the lights and walking away from our sole outpost in space" makes no sense.
Retired NASA historian and Smithsonian curator Roger Launius notes that any such move will affect all the other countries involved in the space station; Russia is a major player, as is Europe, Japan and Canada.
NASA has spent close to $100 billion on the orbiting outpost since the 1990s. The first piece was launched in 1998, and the complex was essentially completed with the retirement of NASA's space shuttles in 2011.
MIT astronautics professor Dava Newman, who was the deputy NASA chief under Barack Obama, called the space station "the cornerstone of space exploration today" but said the Trump administration's proposal makes sense because it is doing long-term planning.
The president proposes shifting large chunks of money from the space station, satellites studying a warming Earth and a major space telescope toward a multi-year $10.4 billion exploration plan aimed at returning astronauts to the moon in about five or six years.
"We're building capability for the eventual human exploration of deep space and the moon is a stepping stone," NASA's acting chief financial officer Andrew Hunter said in a Monday news conference.
The president's budget proposal, including NASA's portion, was obsolete even before it was made public, but it provides a view into the administration's priorities. Congress earlier this month passed a spending package that set limits through the end of the next budget year.
The same budget proposal proposes to pull the plug on WFIRST, a space telescope mission that NASA said is "designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics."
And for the second straight year, the Trump administration proposes killing five missions that study Earth, especially its climate and the effects of carbon dioxide. The president also plans to end education programs in the space agency.
Private businesses already have a hand in the space station project. The end of the shuttle program prompted NASA to turn over supply runs to the commercial sector. SpaceX and Orbital ATK have been making deliveries since 2012, and Sierra Nevada Corp. will begin making shipments with its crew-less mini shuttles in a few years.
SpaceX and Boeing, meanwhile, are developing crew capsules to fly astronauts to and from the space station within the next year. These commercial flights will represent the first astronaut launches from U.S. soil since NASA's shuttles stopped flying.
A complete transfer to the commercial sector is a different matter, however. Mike Suffredini, a former space station program manager for NASA who now runs Axiom Space in Houston and aims to establish the world's first commercial space station cautioned that the U.S. government needs to have a direct hand in the International Space Station until it comes down. No company would accept the liabilities and risks associated with the station, he said, if the sprawling complex went out of control and came crashing down.
His company's plan is to attach its own compartments to the existing International Space Station and, once the decision is made to dismantle the complex, detach its segment and continue orbiting on its own.
Altogether, the administration's proposed budget , along with an addendum , seeks to increase NASA's budget slightly to $19.9 billion.
While the budget plan said it places renewed support on returning humans to the moon, followed by human expeditions to Mars and elsewhere, no precise timeline and few details are provided. The supersize Space Launch System rocket being built by NASA to send astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit — along with its Orion crew capsule — would get $3.7 billion under this budget. A test launch of this system would remain on track for 2020, with a first crewed launch around the moon three years later, according to budget details.
In an agency-wide address, NASA's acting administrator Robert Lightfoot said it was a "very exciting" budget with lots of potential, despite some hard decisions. Among them: the proposed end of WFIRST, a telescope with 100 times the field of view of the Hubble Space Telescope. WFIRST was a mission that the National Academies of Science listed as the decade's No. 1 priority for future NASA astrophysics missions.
The WFIRST telescope's cost estimates have ballooned to $3.6 billion and Hunter said it just got too expensive.
NEW YORK (AP) — With Donald Trump’s fixer-turned-foe Michael Cohen expected to take the witness stand Monday, the judge in the former president’s hush money case issued prosecutors a stern warning: Get Cohen to stop his taunting posts and jabs at Trump.
Judge Juan M. Merchan's comments came as a dramatic and consequential week in the first criminal trial of a former American president drew to a close Friday. The prosecution could rest its case by the end of next week, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said.
Prosecutors have been building up their case ahead of important testimony from Cohen, who arranged the $130,000 payout to porn actor Stormy Daniels to keep her from going public ahead of the 2016 election about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier. Trump denies ever having sex with Daniels.
The judge's warning underscores how Cohen is not only prosecutors' most crucial witness, but their most complicated. Once a Trump loyalist, he has become one of his fiercest critics since pleading guilty to federal charges, routinely bashing and mocking the former president on social media.
Defense attorneys will argue that the now-disbarred lawyer who served prison time is out to get Trump and cannot be believed.
Two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Cohen is expected to take the stand Monday. The people could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
Trump’s lawyers complained after Cohen in a social media video this week wore a shirt featuring a figure resembling the former president behind bars. The defense has argued it's unfair that Trump is under a gag order that prevents him from speaking publicly about witnesses while Cohen is free to speak badly about Trump.
“It’s becoming a problem every single day that President Trump is not allowed to respond to this witness, but this witness is allowed to continue to talk,” defense attorney Todd Blanche said.
Merchan told prosecutors they should inform Cohen “that the judge is asking him to refrain from making any more statements” about the case or about Trump. Prosecutors told the judge they already requested that Cohen and other witnesses not talk about the case, but they have no direct means of controlling witnesses' behavior.
Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press.
As the third week of testimony wrapped up, the case that ultimately hinges on record-keeping returned to deeply technical testimony — a sharp contrast from Daniels’ dramatic, if not downright seamy, account of the alleged sexual encounter with Trump that riveted jurors earlier this week.
Witnesses in the case have seesawed between bookkeepers and bankers with testimony about records and finances to Daniels and others with unflattering stories about Trump and the tabloid world machinations meant to keep them secret. Despite all the drama, in the end, the trial is about money changing hands — business transactions — and whether those payments were made to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Friday’s dry testimony appeared to test jurors’ patience at times. One juror stifled a yawn while another stretched out his arms. Others shifted their gaze around the room or stared up at the ceiling.
Trump, who was visibly angry during much of Daniels’ testimony, chatted frequently with his lawyers and read through a stack of papers on the table in front of him as jurors heard from witnesses such as AT&T and Verizon workers, who authenticated phone records.
Leaving the courthouse, Trump addressed the allegation at the heart of the case: that he falsified his company’s records to conceal the nature of hush money reimbursements to Cohen. Trump’s lawyers have portrayed the ledger entries at issue in the case as pro forma actions performed by a Trump Organization employee.
“A very good bookkeeper marked a legal expense as a legal expense,” Trump said. “He was a lawyer, not a fixer,” he added, referring to Cohen.
Back on the witness stand Friday morning was Madeleine Westerhout, a former Trump White House aide. Prosecutors used Westerhout's testimony to detail the process by which Trump got personal mail — including checks to sign — while in the White House. It’s relevant because that’s how he received and signed the checks that reimbursed Cohen for the payment to Daniels, prosecutors say.
While questioning Westerhout, Trump's attorney elicited testimony aimed at supporting the defense's argument that Daniels was paid to stay silent in order to protect Trump’s family, not his campaign.
Westerhout told jurors that Trump was “very upset” when The Wall Street Journal published a 2018 story about the hush money deal with Daniels.
“My understanding was that he knew it would be hurtful to his family,” Westerhout said, though she acknowledged she didn’t recall him saying so specifically.
Jurors also saw social media posts showing that Trump initially praised Cohen after the then-lawyer came under federal investigation. Trump started bashing him after Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, along with other crimes, and claimed Trump directed him to arrange the payment for Daniels. Trump was never charged with any crime related to that federal investigation.
Daniels’ story of an alleged sexual encounter with Trump was a crucial building block for prosecutors, who are seeking to show that the Republican and his allies buried unflattering stories in the waning weeks of the 2016 presidential election in an effort to illegally influence the race.
Over more than 7½ hours of testimony, Daniels relayed in graphic detail what she says happened after the two met at a 2006 celebrity golf outing at Lake Tahoe where sponsors included the adult film studio where she worked. Daniels explained how she felt surprise, fear and discomfort, even as she consented to sex with Trump.
During combative cross-examination, Trump's lawyers sought to paint Daniels as a liar and extortionist who’s trying to take down the former president after drawing money and fame from her claims.
After Daniels left the witness stand Thursday, Trump's attorneys pushed for a mistrial over the level of tawdry details she provided, but the judge denied the request.
This criminal case could be the only one of four against the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to go to trial before voters decide in November whether to send him back to the White House. Trump has pleaded not guilty and casts himself as the victim of a politically tainted justice system working to deny him another term.
Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Eric Tucker in Washington, Ruth Brown in New York and Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed.
Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche, right, arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, Friday, May 10, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche, right, arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, Friday, May 10, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche, right, arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, Friday, May 10, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche, right, arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, Friday, May 10, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump, with attorney Todd Blanche, right, arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, Friday, May 10, 2024. (Timothy A. Clary/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump gestures as he walks to the courtroom following a break in his trial at Manhattan criminal court Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump, with his attorney Todd Blanch at his side, arrives for his trial at Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. (Victor J. Blue/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
Stormy Daniels testifies on the witness stand as a promotional image for one of her shows featuring an image of Trump is displayed on monitors in Manhattan criminal court, Thursday, May 9, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
Former President Donald Trump speaks to the media at the end of the day of his hush money trial, in New York, Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP)
