President Donald Trump gave the longest State of the Union address in American history last night, speaking for 107 minutes about the “roaring” U.S. economy, “crazy” Democrats, and “the scourge of illegal immigration.” Amid this widely misleading tirade, Trump made two brief nods to American spaceflight but somehow failed to mention the fact that NASA is poised to launch its most important crewed mission since the Apollo era.
The kicker is, the astronauts were literally sitting in the audience. NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen attended the event as guests of House Speaker Mike Johnson. The Artemis 2 mission will send them on a 10-day trip around the Moon this year, marking the first lunar flyby in over 50 years and the farthest human spaceflight in history.
Artemis 2 is essential to ushering in the “golden age of American space leadership” that the Trump administration so often touts, so the snub was confusing to say the least. The President did, however, vaguely reference the glory of the Apollo era and sing his praises for the U.S. Space Force.
“Space Force is my baby,” Trump said. “We did that. My baby is becoming so important.”
Missed opportunity
The first crewed flight of NASA’s Artemis program is a critical step toward the country’s long-awaited return to the Moon’s surface. By validating the human-rated performance of the agency’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion spacecraft, Artemis 2 will pave the way for a crewed lunar landing and subsequent missions that will build the infrastructure to sustain a continuous human presence on the Moon.
This will be essential to maintaining American leadership in space and launching future Mars missions—both key pillars of the Trump administration’s spaceflight agenda. China’s own advancements toward a crewed lunar landing have raised the stakes for NASA’s Artemis program, imbuing it with a renewed sense of urgency.
The State of the Union could have been a powerful opportunity for Trump to highlight these facts and introduce Americans to the astronauts who will help turn his administration’s vision for U.S. spaceflight into reality. And boy, Artemis 2 sure could use the attention right now. Despite the enormous significance of this mission, it has struggled to capture public interest. Even some spaceflight enthusiasts are becoming disillusioned as technical issues continue to push back the launch date. With SLS and Orion rolling back to NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs today, Artemis 2 will now launch in April at the earliest.
This is more than a PR problem. NASA needs public support for Artemis 2 because taxpayer funding and voting power will determine whether the program lasts long enough to secure U.S. leadership in space and push human exploration deeper into the solar system. Without sustained public interest and political will, this multi-billion-dollar endeavor will quickly become an easy budgetary target.
But Trump did not use his speech to spotlight the mission and its crew or to restore Americans’ confidence that it will launch this year—something he easily could have managed by borrowing a single minute from his largely inaccurate rant about economic growth or his anti-Democrat diatribe. With this snub, the President squandered an opportunity to unite the country around one of its most inspiring endeavors and, in doing so, undermined his own space policy.
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