Nasa brought crashing down to earth as budget threat follows lunar success

It should have been a victory lap for Jared Isaacman. The Nasa administrator was in Washington DC for what he surely hoped would be a celebration with lawmakers and the US president, little more than two weeks after the successful conclusion of the first human journey around the moon in more than half a century.

Instead, last week began with some difficult questions in Congress about the Trump administration’s unpopular plan to slash the space agency’s budget. It ended at the White House with the president appearing to poke fun at his prominent ears, watched by four bemused Artemis II astronauts waiting in vain for any question about their historic mission.

There could have been no better illustration of how Donald Trump has tarnished the aftermath of Nasa’s greatest moment in five decades, and is singularly focused on dismantling the agency’s science programs even as he urges it to plant a Stars and Stripes flag back on the moon before he leaves office in January 2029. At least part of Trump’s hostility to Nasa’s science programs appears to stem from his animus towards the agency’s role in climate research.