The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (NGRST) is a marvel of engineering design. It was built to explore the poorly understood and pervasive substance of dark matter and to take a closer look at nearby exoplanets–two of the most important scientific objectives in all of physics and astrobiology. Yet, while it was sitting fully assembled on the floor of Goddard Spaceflight Center, the Trump administration, motivated by the so called “efficiency” of DOGE, included NGRST in their proposed 20% cut to the overall NASA budget.
Grounding a fully built, $3.2B space telescope would more of a waste than anything Musk’s operatives claim to have uncovered in the government to date. It is a technological marvel, built faster and cheaper than the James Webb telescope, and the cost to operate it would be negligible compared to the development costs. It’s the exact type of efficiency that taxpayers want and expect and associate with NASA. The cut is flat out nonsensical outside of ideological grounds. It’s like prepping a Michelin star meal and not walking the plate out to your customers and waiting the table.
It would be one thing to argue, although wrongly, that space telescope missions aren’t worth it in the first place. But to ground a next generation satellite which will do revolutionary studies of the cosmos? It’s unpatriotic, inefficient, reckless, thoughtless, and undermines our leadership in the space industry. This poorly conceived, senseless cut of a technological marvel just as we were about to launch it and reap the rewards of tireless efforts by public servants at NASA, is indicative of the attitude DOGE has toward all of our government programs.
NGRST resides at Goddard Spaceflight Center in New York. It’s not coincidence that the missions this administration are targeting are in blue cities within blue states. The plan has always been to take tax dollars from the economic, liberal centers of our country, and dole them out socialism style to red states, in favor of human space flight programs which do little science compared to robotic missions.
The White House has come for the bipartisan science projects across NASA. They’ve come for the scientific pillars of government like NIH and NSF and CDC. They will stop at nothing to crack the foundations of our society to let the noxious weeds of oligarchy and corruption spread. It’s our responsibility to stop them.
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