Deviating from his previous lunar-landing policy, President
Donald Trump announced Friday that space efforts made by NASA should steer
clear of the Moon and instead head toward the outer reaches of space,
“including Mars (of which the Moon is a part)".
The unprovoked tweet, which appears to be commenting on his
administration’s space platform, stumped the internet on Friday and garnered a
few facetious
comments from around the globe and an onslaught
of guffawed Twitter comments. (In case you were wondering, the Moon is not a
part of Mars. In fact, the red planet has two of
its own moons named Phobos and Deimos.)
The Tweet comes just hours after NASA announced
it will be taking tourists to the International Space Station in a new
initiative to bring commercial business opportunities to low-Earth orbit – and
on the same day that Trump-appointed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told audience members at the
International Space Development Conference that “the very first policy
directive of the President said, ‘we’re going to go back to the moon.’”
He said in a tweet:
“For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be
talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be
focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the
Moon is a part), Defense and Science!”
Learn more here.