Tag: Donald Trump
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U.S. Defense Secretary Praises Blue Origin’s Role in Military and Space Programs
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday praised Blue Origin for its contributions to U.S. military operations and space exploration, speaking at the company’s rocket manufacturing facility in Cape Canaveral, Florida. During remarks delivered at the site, Hegseth reviewed Department of Defense activities carried out during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term…
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U.S. Senate Boosts Funding for NASA, NOAA, NSF in Rejection of Trump Budget Cuts
The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to provide billions of dollars more in funding for major federal science agencies than requested by the Trump administration, rejecting proposed deep cuts to research, space science and weather programs. In an 82–15 vote, the Senate approved a so-called minibus spending package funding agencies including the National Aeronautics…
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U.S. Space Force Awards Prototype Contracts for Space-Based Missile Interceptors
The U.S. Space Force has awarded initial prototype contracts to multiple companies to develop space-based interceptors capable of disabling enemy missiles within minutes of launch, as part of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative, the service said in a statement. The contracts were issued under competitive Other Transaction Agreements (OTAs), a mechanism used to…
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Trump Re-Nominates Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator After Earlier Withdrawal
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he is re-nominating private astronaut and entrepreneur Jared Isaacman to lead NASA, five months after Isaacman’s initial nomination was withdrawn following a dispute between Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The decision restores the billionaire e-commerce executive as Trump’s pick to head the U.S. space agency at a…
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5 things in Trump’s budget that won’t make NASA great again
If signed into law as written, the White House’s proposal to slash nearly 25 percent from NASA’s budget would have some dire consequences. It would cut the agency’s budget from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. Adjusted for inflation, this would be the smallest NASA budget since 1961, when the first American launched into space. The proposed funding plan…
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How the Trump-Musk feud could change the equation for SpaceX and industry rivals
Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were all smiles at a farewell news briefing on May 30, but it didn’t take long for their relationship to turn sour. (White House Photo / Molly Riley) The rapidly escalating spat between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, definitely adds to the challenges facing…
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Trump Taps Gen. Guetlein to Lead Ambitious Golden Dome Missile Defense Initiative
Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced the selection of U.S. Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein to oversee the Golden Dome missile defense initiative, a high-cost and technologically complex program intended to build a national shield against advanced missile threats, including hypersonic and ballistic weapons. Speaking during an Oval Office briefing with Defense Secretary…
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Here are the reasons SpaceX won nearly all recent military launch contracts
In the last week, the US Space Force awarded SpaceX a $5.9 billion deal to make Elon Musk’s space company the Pentagon’s leading launch provider, and then it assigned the vast majority of this year’s most lucrative launch contracts to SpaceX. On top of these actions, the Space Force reassigned the launch of a GPS…
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Maybe Trump should go back to calling his missile shield the Iron Dome
The US Space Force celebrated its fifth birthday last year, when it boasted an annual budget of $29 billion, about 3.5 percent of the Pentagon’s overall funding level. On March 15, President Donald Trump signed a stopgap spending bill that set the Space Force’s budget for fiscal year 2025 at $28.7 billion. This was the…
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What’s behind the changed relationship between Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump?
In October 2019, Amazon sued the Pentagon, alleging that President Donald Trump had blocked the company from securing a $10 billion cloud-computing contract because of his animus toward The Washington Post and its owner Jeff Bezos—whom the US president derided as “Jeff Bozo.” At the time, the dispute was just one example of the near-constant…