What Do We Get For That?

The total actual 2024 budget to run the country was about 7 trillion dollars.  That means the NASA budget was only 0.004 of the national budget -- less than half a percent.  For every hundred dollars the US government spent, it put 40 cents in the bucket for NASA.

And what do we get for that?  The Universe. 

Missions to Mercury, Venus, Jupiter.  Landers on Mars, telescopes that peer through the depths of the cosmos, a fleet of spacecraft monitoring the Sun, the star to which we owe our existence.  The abject awe and wonder of images of a glorious cosmos.  The first A in NASA is for Aeronautics, too; research that makes air travel better, faster, and safer.  NASA science includes observing and monitoring our own planet as well, making satellites that track our water, atmosphere, and land. NASA scientists study climate change, one of the single biggest existential threats to humanity.

NASA employs about 18,000 people across all 50 states (and that doesn't include contractors, of which I was one for many years, and people such as  academics who have NASA grants).  NASA partners with space agencies around the world, a diversified portfolio that guarantees the best scientific research always pushing past the cutting edge and accelerating our understanding of, well, everything. 

-- Philip Plait, Bad Astronomy Newsletter, "Trump threatens to eviscerate NASA" (2 June 2025)

RIP InSight

My power's really low, so this may be the last image I can send.  Don't worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene.  If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will -- but I'll be signing off here soon.  Thanks for staying with me.

-- NASA's InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport) lander, which has been conducting scientific explorations on the Martian surface for nearly four years, 11 December 2022

As We Shall Return

Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come -- but we believe not too long into the future -- I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record.  That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow.  And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.  "Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

-- Eugene Andrew "Gene" Cernan (1934 - 2017), American astronaut, naval aviator, electrical engineer, aeronautical engineer, and fighter pilot, eleventh and final human being to walk on the Moon, on his final lunar excursion, 14 December 1972

Artemis

With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before.  We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the Moon.  Then, we will use what we learn on and around the Moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.

We're going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation.  While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.

We will build an Artemis Base Camp on the surface and the Gateway in lunar orbit.  These elements will allow our robots and astronauts to explore more and conduct more science than ever before.

All that we build, all that we study, all that we do, prepares us to go.

-- NASA, on their home page for the Artemis project, retrieved 29 August 2022

Ingenuity

We upload the commands we want to run, and then we die inside for hours waiting to learn what happened.  Then, when all the data comes back, we frantically get online and look at it to make sure that everything went the way we wanted it to go.

-- Ingenuity lead operations manager Tim Canham, discussing the Ingenuity helicopter, which made history early Monday when the small but intrepid drone became the first powered craft to fly on another world, Wall Street Journal, 19 April 2021

Touchdown

Touchdown confirmed.  Perseverance is safely on the surface of Mars!

-- Swati Mohan, JPL engineer narrating the successful, autonomous landing of NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars using a sky crane, at a distance of 127,000,000 miles from mission control, 3:55PM EST, 18 February 2021

Thanks For Flying SpaceX

Splashdown.  Dragon Endeavor has returned home.  Welcome back to planet earth, and thanks for flying SpaceX.

-- SpaceX Mission Control as Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley returned to Earth in the first water landing by an American space crew since 1975, completing the first astronaut trip to orbit by a private company, 2 August 2020

Let's See Them Aliens

[Area 51] is an open training range for the U.S. Air Force, and we would discourage anyone from trying to come into the area where we train American armed forces.  The U.S. Air Force always stands ready to protect America and its assets.

-- Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews, regarding a tongue-in-cheek September 20th Facebook event called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us", now with 1.4M listed as Going; McAndrews added that she could not elaborate on specific plans or security procedures at the base. Washington Post, 12 July 2019

RIP Opportunity Rover

It is because of trailblazing missions such as Opportunity that there will come a day when our brave astronauts walk on the surface of Mars.  And when that day arrives, some portion of that first footprint will be owned by the men and women of Opportunity, and a little rover that defied the odds and did so much in the name of exploration.

-- NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, in a statement marking the end of NASA's Opportunity Rover Mission on Mars, at mars.nasa.gov, 13 February 2019


Designed to last just 90 Martian days and travel 1,100 yards (1,000 meters), Opportunity vastly surpassed all expectations in its endurance, scientific value and longevity.  In addition to exceeding its life expectancy by 60 times, the rover traveled more than 28 miles (45 kilometers) by the time it reached its most appropriate final resting spot on Mars -- Perseverance Valley.

InSight

This was an amazing, amazing day.  To be in the room when the data stops and to know how quiet it gets ... and then once the data comes back, the elation. ... Every milestone is something that happened 8 minutes ago.  It's already history.

-- NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine on the agency's InSight Mars explorer, his first landing as head of the agency, at a news conference; because it takes more than eight minutes for light signals to travel 100 million miles to Earth, scientists have no control over the 7-minutes between entering the atmosphere and landing; Washington Post, 26 November 2018

Starman

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket, the most powerful launch system on Earth, roared into the sky on Tuesday afternoon atop a pillar of smoke.

The rocket's three reusable boosters lifted the vehicle skyward, ultimately helping send Elon Musk's personal Tesla Roadster on a journey toward Mars orbit.

"It looks so ridiculous and impossible.  You can tell it's real because it looks so fake, honestly," Musk said at the post-launch press conference.

But he added: "The imagery of it is something that's going to get people excited around the world, and it's still tripping me out.  I'm tripping balls here."

-- Elon Musk, as quoted in Business Insider, 6 February 2018

On Mars

I'd like to die on Mars, just not on impact.

-- Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla founder, in a keynote address at SXSW, 9 March 2013

Water Ice Cliffs On Mars

Thick deposits cover broad regions of the Martian mid-latitudes with a smooth mantle; erosion in these regions creates scarps that expose the internal structure of the mantle.  We investigated eight of these locations and found that they expose deposits of water ice that can be >100 meters thick, extending downward from depths as shallow as 1 to 2 meters below the surface.  The scarps are actively retreating because of sublimation of the exposed water ice.  The ice deposits likely originated as snowfall during Mars' high-obliquity periods and have now compacted into massive, fractured, and layered ice.  We expect the vertical structure of Martian ice-rich deposits to preserve a record of ice deposition and past climate.

-- Exposed subsurface ice sheets in the Martian mid-latitudes, Abstract, Colin M. Dundas, Ali M. Bramson2, Lujendra Ojha3, James J. Wray4, Michael T. Mellon5, Shane Byrne2, Alfred S. McEwen2, Nathaniel E. Putzig6, Donna Viola2, Sarah Sutton2, Erin Clark2, John W. Holt7, Science, 12 January 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6372, pp. 199-201