Think About It: NASA's Science Teams on Hold and why

It's all a bit of a pickle right? NASA, the awesome space agency, has temporarily paused a bunch of their science committees. This isn't just about one or two groups, but several. Why ? They're trying to figure out how to follow recent orders from the president. The big guy in charge, who is also the president of the USA, issued several orders including cutting federal employees working on diversity, equality, and inclusion roles and basically getting rid of the climate change rules from the last plan. NASA just wanted to make sure that they were following all the rules to a T. The space agency tried to clean it up by trying to make sure all department are following the rules to perfection. There are so many orders it is hard for everyone to keep up. Now, these analysis groups aren't just any random groups. They're organized by the community and don't really fall under any fancy laws, but they are good for the agency because they give feedback and guide the agency to make decisions on where to explore next.

One of these groups, called the Mercury Exploration Assessment Group, had a meeting that was cancelled. The meeting was supposed to happen on Tuesday, but it was called off because of the memo from NASA. Of course, this upset the people working on the project because they were excited to get together in person. NASA isn't the only place having a hard time with all these new orders. Other science places, like the National Institute of Health, also had to cancel meetings in late January. The president put a hold on looking at research grants, travel, and training. It made a lot of people very upset. Now when Donald Trump was inaugurated, he said all the right things by promising to send astronauts to Mars to plant the American flag. He was hoping to get astronauts to the moon by 2027 and then to Mars in the 2030s. Now, without the knowledge of the current president’s manifesto, Elon Musk is also gung-ho (enthusiastic) about going to Mars.

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