Although the details remain in flux, the transition team reviewing NASA and its activities has begun to draft potential executive orders for changes to space policy under the Trump Administration.
Sources familiar with the five people on the team, who have spent the last six weeks assessing the space agency and its exploration plans, were careful to note that such teams are advisory in nature. They do not formally set policy nor is their work always indicative of the direction an incoming presidential administration will move toward.
Nevertheless, in trying to set clear goals for NASA and civil space policy, the ideas under consideration reflect the Trump administration’s desire for “big changes” at NASA, both in terms of increasing the effectiveness and velocity of its programs.
Not business as usual
The transition team has been grappling with an agency that has a superfluity of field centers—ten spread across the United States, as well as a formal headquarters in Washington, DC—and large, slow-moving programs that cost a lot of money and have been slow to deliver results.
“This will not be business as usual,” one person familiar with this group’s meetings said. The mindset driving their deliberations is a focus on results and speed.
Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president for his second term a little less than a month from now, on January 20. On that day he is expected to sign a number of executive orders on issues that he campaigned on. This could include space policy, but more likely that will wait until later in his presidency.
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