Mars...the next frontier?
Mars...the next frontier? Getty

Today, Trump signed a bill into law that increases NASA's budget for 2018 to $19.5 billion, and explicitly directs the agency to focus its energies on the development of technology and equipment to get a human-manned flight to Mars by 2033. In sum, exploration of the red planet should be its number one priority.

There was no mention of further moon exploration (Will we ever go back? Did we ever really go?) despite Trump administration buzz that indicated we might be setting up a base there, and the looming threat of competition from China—which is currently planning a sample return moon mission to start by the end of 2017, with more extensive moon manning in future years—and Russia, which wants to establish a lunar colony on the moon by 2030.

Surprisingly, the law keeps funding intact for NASA's rather crucial earth science department (and its studies on climate change), however the department will still have to cut four specific missions: the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite (which monitors the health of our oceans, and expands upon atmospheric studies); the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3) experiment, which collects precise space-based measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to assess its growth (or decline) over an annual cycle; the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder, which can produce accurate climate records to test climate projections, improve models and enable sound policy decisions; and the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), which maintains the nation's real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, critical to the accuracy and lead time of NOAA's space weather alerts and forecasts.

In sum, the Trump administration is still shitting on climate change studies, but with less straining as far as NASA goes. Trump's proposed federal budget takes a chunk of funding away from the EPA, and entirely de-funds certain important programs that protect the land, water and earth from pollution in favor of helping out big business. Because why would Trump care that he's signing away a clean environment and slowly destroying our only planet, when he's putting plans in place to explore (and eventually colonize) another (less habitable) planet?

The Mars directive starts with testing of the Space Launch System rocket and the deep space vehicle Orion beginning in 2018. It is followed by a mission to establish a more permanent presence around the moon in 2021, not to explore it but to test out long term living modules and other space travel systems.