
Despite President Trump's claims that he would usher in a new era of space exploration, NASA just revealed they haven't been given funding for it.
President Donald Trump promised that he would usher in a new era of greatness for NASA, and Vice President Mike Pence just a few days ago said the new budget would do just that. But a top official with the space agency just admitted that a key part of NASA’s vision, which is to send a manned mission to Mars in the coming decades, isn’t even funded.
William H. Gerstenmaier, head of human spaceflight at NASA, admitted recently that that’s why the agency can’t put a date on a future mission to the Red Planet: they have no idea when they’ll get any money for it, or if they will.
“I can’t put a date on humans on Mars, and the reason really is that at the budget levels we described, this roughly 2 percent increase, we don’t have the surface systems available for Mars,” NASA’s William H. Gerstenmaier said according to the Daily Mail. “The entry, descent and landing is a huge challenge for us for Mars. We think an unfuelled mars asset vehicle would weigh around 20 tons, that’s a 20 fold increase on a rover.”
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