Space Policy: What Does Trump's Victory Mean for NASA, Internal Memo Released?

After president-elect Donald Trump won the elections by a tight margin, scientists fear for the future of NASA and its space exploration programs. Trump was once quoted saying that money spent on space programs can still be used for projects on Earth.

The current NASA chief, Charles Bolden, had worked with President Barack Obama and other commercial space flight agencies such as SpaceX and Boeing. Today, Bolden faced the truth about the change in administration in an internal memo as Inverse reported.

There were reports that say the future Trump administration won't support NASA science as much as Obama did. This put NASA officials, scientists and employees in an uncertain condition. Bolden wants to address that.

"I think we can all be confident that the new Trump Administration and future administrations after that will continue the visionary course on which President Barack Obama has set us, a course that all of you have made possible," NASA administrator Charles Bolden, said in the memo published by SpaceRef.

This expresses the NASA chief's confidence that Trump will still back up NASA's billion dollar space explorations, most importantly the Journey to Mars. NASA has shown strength in lobbying for funding for its space explorations programs especially now that the agency is moving deeper into the Solar System.

President Obama and the White House science center expressed their support to NASA recently. "We have set a clear goal vital to the next chapter of America's story in space: sending humans to Mars by the 2030s and returning them safely to Earth, with the ultimate ambition to one day remains there for an extended time," President Barack Obama said in an essay published by CNN.

No one knows for sure if the Trump administration will extend the same sentiment and support towards NASA's space program but despite that, the NASA chief remains confident that the government and the new administration will back up their projects now more than ever.

With the inauguration of the James Webb Telescope, some say it will aid the search for life. Who knows astronomers may be able to find signs of life in the near future. NASA is also moving towards enhancements of asteroid prediction and is on its way to retrieve samples from an actual space rock. Clearly, this is not the time to stop the support NASA is getting from the government. And as unpredictable as he is, Bolden and the agency can only hope that the president-elect will respond positively to NASA's scientific explorations.