NASA Deputy Administrator Sean Duffy stated that the agency will move away from climate science in order to focus on space exploration.
“All the climate science and all the other priorities that the previous administration had at NASA, we will set aside”, Duffy told Fox Business. “All the science we do will be directed toward exploration, which is NASA’s mission. That’s why we have NASA – to explore, not to deal with all these geosciences,” he said.
He noted that future science will focus on missions to the Moon, Mars, and destinations in low Earth orbit after the retirement of the International Space Station (ISS), expected sometime after 2030.
D. Trump, in both of his terms, has sought to curtail NASA’s Earth sciences program, which is the largest provider of climate data.
His latest comments come after D. Trump’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget, calling for drastic reductions in its geoscience initiatives.
The policy shift at NASA is likely to endanger areas such as climate monitoring and weather forecasting.
During D. Trump’s first term, Earth sciences repeatedly faced budget cut threats and the potential cancellation of missions such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3 (OCO-3) and CLARREO Pathfinder. Now, the budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 seeks to reduce NASA’s overall science funding by 47%, cutting Earth sciences by more than half.
