Budget proposal would hit Goddard missions

Ocean health and atmospheric monitoring programs threatened

WASHINGTON — Deep spending cuts called for in President Donald Trump’s federal budget proposal would fall on two space programs with ties to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, both of which have implications for climate science.

Trump’s $1.15 trillion budget proposal, unveiled Thursday, would eliminate an earth sciences satellite being built and tested at Goddard for launch in 2022 to study the earth’s oceans.

Another proposal zeros out funding for data analysis from two deep space science instruments positioned on a satellite already in orbit.

Given Trump’s skepticism that human activity is responsible for climate change, it was little surprise his budget recommended slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from federal programs to tackle the issue. The blueprint also cut funding for efforts to reduce power plant emissions.

“I think the president was fairly straightforward — we're not spending money on that anymore,” chief White House budget architect Mick Mulvaney said as he announced Trump’s budget. “We consider that to be a waste of your money.”

Presidential budget proposals rarely gain traction on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have flexibility to set program-by-program spending. Opponents of the reductions say there has historically been room for negotiation in Congress to continue funding for space and science programs.

Trump’s budget proposal requests $19.1 billion for NASA in the fiscal year that begins in October, representing a far smaller reduction — less than 1 percent — than he proposed for most other agencies. Within the NASA budget, the White House sought to emphasize space exploration over the study of earth.

That focus seems to square with one of the more aspirational passages of his State