RIP to These NASA X Accounts, as U.S. Science Falls Off a Cliff

NASA is of linen at least 23 X Accounts managed by the Agency’s Scientific Mission Directorate (SMD), citing the need to “strategically reduce” its digital imprint. This decision comes in the wake of the financing cuts proposed by President Donald Trump who could kill many research programs.

Nasa operates more than 400 accounts of social media, including 300 belong at SMD. It’s just to say that it’s a bit excessive. The agency believes that its efforts to consolidate these accounts – which began In 2018, its impact on social networks will improve thanks to a more coherent messaging. Some subscribers, such as the photographer of space flights John Kraus, welcome the change. Kraus describe Consolidation as “expected for a long time”. But others do not agree, arguing that the closing these accounts will further limit public access and attention to research in Trump’s America.

“In my opinion, the fundamental force of social media is to let individual voices and their quirks find their individual audience,” said the astronomer of Harvard Jonathan McDowell University tweeted Tuesday, June 10. “Make a bland uniform business account to replace the individual [NASA] Voices is an error.

The agency said The public will not lose access to social media updates on all SMD programs assigned, but their accounts will either be archived, merged into larger thematic accounts or NASA flagship canals, or renamed to “better align with the strategic framework”.

The accounts of NASA X (formerly Twitter) which have been or which should soon be archived serve as critical awareness platforms for specific research programs, space vessels, Rovers, satellites and other scientific initiatives. These are just some of those who are nixed:

• Perseverance Mars Rover: @nasapeSevere
• Curiosity Mars Rover: @Marscuriosity
• Travel 1 and 2 spaceship: @Nasavoyer
• Commercial crew program: @commercial_crew
• Exploration Systems Ground: @Nasagroundys
• International research of the space station: @iss_research
• Space launch system (SLS): @nasa_sls
• Orion Spacecraft: @nasa_orion
• Transit transit survey satellite (tess): @nasa_tess
• Goddard Institute for Space Studies: @Nasagiss

Some of these accounts, such as page X Curiosity Mars Rover, have millions of followers. “Don’t worry, my mission is not going now,” said curiosity fans assured on Monday, but it cannot be said about all these programs.

Trump’s Trump budget budget request Proposes to reduce the financing of NASA by almost 25% in one year, one of the largest percentage reductions offered in the history of the agency. This includes a 47% reduction in the agency’s scientific program, a decision that “decimates” NASA, according to the planetary company.

If it is approved by the congress, the budget kill At least 41 active and planned space missions. The financing of traveling, for example, would drop from $ 7.8 million to $ 5 million in 2026, then fell to zero in 2029, the Washington Post reported. The Mars Sample Return (MRS) mission, which intends to return samples from the surface of the red planet, conscientiously perceived by Perseverance Rover of NASA in recent years, is also on the Cup block. The financing cuts would finally retire from Megarocket of the Orion capsule and the space launch system (SLS) Ars Technica.

The International Space Station (ISS) already feels the compression of funding. The Center for Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) – which operates the National ISS laboratory – recently canceled a next search for the space station Due to the “current regulatory and budgetary environment”.

The proposal also includes radical personnel cuts that would reduce NASA’s workforce by approximately a third. “This would represent NASA’s smallest workforce since the middle of 1960, before the first American launched into space,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space at the Planetary Society, said Space.com. “This is the event in terms of extinction that we warn people,” added Dreier.

With the future scientist of NASA questioned, it is easy to see why the decline in awareness has struck a nerve with some, but it is not the only federal scientific agency confronted with major changes to its online presence. Climate.govThe National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website for its climate program office should close after most of its employees on May 31, The guardian reports. The affected staff told the publication that he thought that the cuts were aimed at restructuring public -oriented climatic information.

While NOAA and NASA face separate challenges, the two agencies are under major changes that signal a changing landscape for the sciences accessible to the public, just like when we need it most.