Trump backs off 2024 moon plans in tweet

The full Moon rises in the sky to the right of the Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares rocket on July 2014, at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. | Aubrey Gemignani/NASA via Getty Images

“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon — We did that 50 years ago,” Trump wrote. “They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!”

Later in the day NASA sought to downplay the declaration, insisting the president still supports his own administration’s exploration plans.

“As @POTUS said, @NASA is using the Moon to send humans to Mars!,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted, using the acronym for president of the United States.

An administration official also told POLITICO that the long-term goal “has always been to get to Mars. We have asked Congress for additional resources to get to the moon by 2024, which will enable us to get to Mars in roughly the next decade.”

But the president’s surprise pronouncement, so soon after the 2024 goal was announced and Trump himself revealed a $1.6 billion request for more money to support it, only sowed more doubt on whether the ambitious moon plans are serious.

“The House Science Committee has been emphasizing the need for a human exploration roadmap, so we can all be on the same page about where we’re going and what we’re doing in exploring deep space with humans,” Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the Texas Democrat who chairs the panel, said in a statement. “Unfortunately, this tweet simply reinforces my sense that the Administration does not fully support its own Moon initiative.”

In March, Vice President Mike Pence, who chairs the Space Council, announced the administration was accelerating its moon mission, seeking to send humans back to the lunar surface by 2024, four years ahead of the schedule set by NASA.

“Some will say it’s too hard, it’s too risky, it’s too expensive, but the same was said back in 1962,” Pence said in Huntsville, Ala., at the fifth meeting of the National Space Council — referring to the year when President John F. Kennedy gave his “we choose to go to the moon” speech.

“Now as then, the United States has a president who is a dreamer, who understands that this is a challenge that once again we are unwilling to postpone and one we intend to win again,” Pence said.

Just last month, Trump also announced his administration was asking for an additional $1.6 billion in its fiscal 2020 budget request to accelerate the moon mission.

“Under my Administration, we are restoring @NASA to greatness and we are going back to the Moon, then Mars. I am updating my budget to include an additional $1.6 billion so that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!” he wrote on Twitter.

Bridenstine has said going to the lunar surface is the best way to prepare for an eventual mission to Mars because it will let astronauts learn how to survive off Earth and use the resources of another celestial body.

“When we go to Mars, we’re going to be there for at least two years,” Bridenstine told Congress in April. “So, we need to learn how to live and work in another world. The moon is the best place to prove those capabilities and technologies. The sooner we can achieve that objective, the sooner we can move on to Mars, and that’s ultimately the objective here.”