SPACE/COSMOS

NASA head defends Artemis 3 crew of all men

AFP
June 10, 2026 

(L/R) NASA astronaut commander Randy Bresnik, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut pilot Luca Parmitano, NASA astronaut mission specialist Frank Rubio, and NASA astronaut mission specialist Andre Douglas, the Artemis 3 crew – Copyright AFP SAUL LOEB

NASA’s administrator Jared Isaacman on Wednesday defended the makeup of the space agency’s latest Artemis crew, an all-male group.

The nominations have earned criticism that NASA may have acted in accordance with President Donald Trump’s direction to eliminate diversity and inclusion efforts.

Isaacman insisted in a lengthy social media post that the “crew selection does not involve any political appointees.”

“The Astronaut Office assigns the crew that gives the mission the best chance of meeting its objectives, taking into account many factors, including the background and expertise of the astronauts, such as test pilot experience, development work on specific programs, and availability.”

The third phase of Artemis will involve testing the Orion spacecraft and conducting rendezvous and docking tests with lunar landers. It will not include a Moon voyage.

NASA had previously committed to put both a woman and a person of color on the lunar surface.

Last year, however, NASA removed language regarding that commitment and diversity more broadly from some of its web pages, as Trump directed federal agencies to eliminate Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs and references.

That doesn’t necessarily mean NASA’s pledge has been scrapped, but it’s no longer explicit.

Isaacman said “those raising this concern may not be aware of the pipeline of crews,” including those “undergoing lunar-specific training that would be a better fit for a future surface mission.”

“We have an extraordinary astronaut corps, and every mission and every crew is part of a larger campaign to get America back to the Moon and to build the future we all dreamed about as children.”

The third Artemis crew includes NASA astronauts Randy Bresnik, who will serve as commander, and mission specialists Andre Douglas and Frank Rubio.

Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano will represent the European Space Agency as the voyage’s pilot, becoming the first European to join one of the program’s missions.

The crew of the Artemis 2 journey conducted this past spring was named prior to Trump’s return to the White House.

It included the first Black man, Victor Glover, and the first woman, Christina Koch, to fly around the Moon.

Jeremy Hansen became the first Canadian to carry out such a mission, while Reid Wiseman was the commander.

From Dusk Till Dawn

 June 10, 2026 

By Eurasia Review

Astronomers have revealed distinct differences in atmospheric conditions between the morning and evening transition zones of the ultra-hot gas planet WASP-121 b, which separate day from night, commonly called terminators. This achievement was only possible due to the unmatched sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Led by Cyril Gapp, a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Heidelberg, Germany, a team of researchers detected this phenomenon, which had previously been predicted by theoretical computations.

Confirmation of variations between dusk and dawn

The discovery corresponds to an asymmetry in the absorption of infrared light received from the host star, which is partially filtered through the planet’s atmosphere during its transit. The researchers interpret this as the result of non-uniform temperatures and chemical compositions in the exoplanet’s atmosphere.

“With its unprecedented observational quality, JWST gives us the most detailed glimpses into distant planets to date: By measuring how star light absorption changes as WASP-121 b rotates, we probe its atmosphere longitude by longitude,” said Cyril Gapp, MPIA.

The data indicate that the evening terminator absorbs more light than the morning side, consistent with the commonly accepted picture of powerful winds that transport intense heat from the day to the night side. Hot winds follow the planet’s rotation eastward, which heats the evening zone. With rising temperatures, this region is bound to expand, increasing the planet’s cross-section and allowing it to absorb stellar radiation more efficiently.

Besides a general slight reduction in brightness towards the end of the transit, the data obtained by JWST’s NIRSpec (Near-infrared spectrograph) instrument also reveal an increase in the carbon monoxide (CO) signal. However, this appears to be a temperature effect, not related to an increase in carbon monoxide molecules.

In contrast, the amount of water (H2O) in the atmosphere appears to drop, which the astronomers interpret as a real decrease in water molecules. The temperatures in the upper atmosphere are high enough to break water molecules into their constituents. This result again corroborates the existence of hot winds heating the evening terminator region.

Two extreme sides of an ultra-hot planet

To detect these minute variations, the astronomers exploited a peculiar behaviour of hot gas planets. The proximity to their host stars slowly synchronizes their spin and orbital motion via tidal forces, such that eventually one rotation takes as long as one revolution. Finally, these planets exhibit two distinct hemispheres: a hot side constantly facing the star and an opposite, darker and cooler side.

“WASP-121b is particularly extreme, with average temperatures on the dayside hemisphere being around 2770 Kelvin, while those on the nightside are closer to about 1000 Kelvin,” co-author Tom Evans-Soma from the University of Newcastle, Australia, explains. He previously determined the planet’s temperature range and is also affiliated with MPIA. These values translate to almost 2500 degrees Celsius, or about 4525 degrees Fahrenheit, on the dayside, and approximately 725 degrees Celsius, or 1340 degrees Fahrenheit, at night.

When astronomers observe such a planet transiting in front of a star, the planet rotates slightly between the points of ingress and egress, revealing different fractions of its atmosphere. While the planet mostly presents its night side, our point of view permits glimpses beyond the dusk and dawn towards the bright dayside, depending on the transit’s progress. The zone leading the planet’s orbit corresponds to the morning side, and the one trailing is the evening side.

Apart from recording the measured brightness variation over time, spectrographs break light into smaller components, which physicists call a spectrum, much as a prism produces a rainbow-like distribution of colours. Since atmospheric gases absorb light at distinct colours or wavelengths, a detailed analysis reveals their chemical composition.

Elapsed time converts to longitude

Hence, the variation along the direction of rotation translates into a time-dependent change of the filtered signal. In the case of WASP-121 b, the rotation angle during a full transit amounts to about 30 degrees, which is sufficient to probe the morning (dawn) and evening (dusk) terminators with high precision in longitude.

Astronomers usually average the measurements over the entire transit to achieve a clearer signal. However, to determine how the signal changes during the planet’s trajectory across the star, Gapp and his colleagues allowed for a temporal variation while the planet rotates. By applying statistical methods, they found that their procedure provides a significantly better fit to the data, indicating that they indeed detected a significant variation.

Notable gaps in atmospheric models

To verify the measured temperatures that would cause local expansion, the astronomers ran models simulating heat distribution in the upper layers of a gas planet, depending on the planet’s properties and the constellation of the planet and its host star. While these atmospheric models confirmed the asymmetric effect caused by spatial temperature variations, the data revealed a larger signal amplitude than the models predicted.

The astronomers suspected that cooling mechanisms at the morning terminator might be at work that the models didn’t account for. Previous studies have indicated that clouds may be present, albeit composed not of water droplets but of minerals such as silicates. Clouds can efficiently shield infrared light emitted from hot gaseous layers below, mimicking lower temperatures. Infamously, simulating the physics of clouds, condensation, and evaporation in a dynamic environment is hard. Therefore, physical models commonly applied to exoplanet atmospheres, such as the one used in this study, do not account for clouds, which can yield unrealistic results.

After tweaking the simulation to approximate the effect clouds have on infrared radiation from deeper layers, the results were more consistent with observations. However, only more sophisticated models will be able to confidently confirm the presence of clouds.

A blueprint for future studies

Model updates will also improve future investigations using this method. The astronomers have already identified additional suitable targets within the required temperature range and rotation speed to successfully probe the terminator regions. This will help them establish a sample of ultrahot gas planets, revealing their longitudinal structure, and potentially discover similarities and differences among these extreme worlds.

NASA’s Artemis-II Mission: Moon Race 2.0 Begins

D Raghunandan | 20 Apr 2026

• 
  
• 
  

Cost cutting in NASA and commercial ventures in space may threaten the Artemis programme which, at least on paper, emphasises international collaboration for the common public good.

Solar Eclipse from the Moon

The US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) launched its much awaited Artemis-II crewed mission, after several minor hiccups and postponements, on April 1, 2026 from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. The Orion spacecraft, launched by NASA’s revamped Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, carried four astronauts, including one from the Canadian Space Agency, on a 10-day mission around the Moon and back, as a precursor to a moon landing in 2028 and later, establishment of a permanent space station on the lunar surface and possible onward missions to Mars.

The Artemis programme is an international collaborative effort led by seven initial partners and joined by many countries, including India. A key role in Artemis-II, and the Artemis programme as a whole, is played by the European Space Agency, which provides the rocket boosters on Orion that propel and power the spacecraft beyond Earth’s gravity, during orbits around the Earth and Moon, as required to set the trajectory, and similarly on the return journey.

The Mission marks the first time humans have returned to outer space beyond low-earth orbit, as is usual in operations to the International Space Station, since the Apollo 17 moon landing by US astronauts in 1972. After that mission, NASA had jettisoned its crewed lunar expeditions given budget cuts against the backdrop of declining public interest in lunar expeditions, with audiences dropping sharply even for live telecasts of astronauts walking on the Moon, reflecting a bored attitude of “been there, done that.” There was also dwindling political backing and lack of the powerful motivation provided earlier by the space race with the Soviet Union, which had come to be considered “won and done.”

There is some sense of déjà vu now, since once again a space race, this time with China, appears to be propelling the US crewed space programmes aiming at prolonged presence on the Moon and potentially using that as a base for missions to Mars. China’s space programme is galloping ahead and targeting a crewed landing on the Moon in 2030. There can be no doubt this is accelerating the Artemis programme compared with the more leisurely pace of the earlier development phase of the SLS rocket and Orion capsule since 2016, with many postponements and budget overruns, in contrast to China’s steady and determined push with every operational deadline being met.  

Just before the Artemis-II launch, the hand-picked head of NASA, Administrator Jared Isaacman, announced a revamp of the Artemis programme with new architecture and timelines. It was felt that the long interval between the initial trials in Artemis-I in 2022 and the present Artemis-II mission in 2026 had been too long, such prolonged intervals being inimical to iterative and efficient modifications and corrective actions, and an accelerated and more purposive architecture was required.

A new Artemis-III mission was, therefore, added, before the planned crewed lunar landing in 2028. The new mission slated for 2027 would take a crew launched by SLS to low-earth orbit, where Orion would dock with the new lunar landing module, built by either SpaceX or Blue Origin depending on competitive evaluation, so as to test all systems before the moon landing in 2028 as per current schedule, with at least one more trial mission each year in between.

The crewed moon landing would be achieved by Orion docking with the landing craft brought separately to lunar orbit probably by SpaceX’s Starship. After this several, rather than a single or few additional crewed missions to the lunar surface as envisaged earlier, would be undertaken during 2028-2030 to set up the planned permanent lunar station.  

An additional budget of $1 billion has been provided for the revamped Artemis programme. However, this does not imply that money is being thrown into NASA’s US space effort. On the contrary, this enhancement of the Artemis budget, viewed as demonstrating and boosting US supremacy in space, is accompanied by a sharp cut in the overall funding for NASA, especially for science, as discussed later.

The Mission

Artemis-II is chiefly a test flight to try out the rocket and the spacecraft, both of which are being used in a crewed mission for the first time. Whereas Artemis-I in November 2022 had tested systems without crew, the present mission tries out the Orion space craft for sustaining human space flight, testing flight operations and maneuvers by crew, and conducting a dress rehearsal for future crewed missions. The mission, therefore, does not involve any major scientific experiments or goals.

The key aspects of the Artemis-II mission are a launch to orbit around Earth, a propulsion boost to take Orion beyond Earth’s gravity toward the Moon till capture by the Moon’s gravity, a figure-8 trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth including a prolonged orbital period on the far side of the Moon which is never seen from our planet, and back to Earth.

After successfully completing all these tasks, the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, executed the usual high-risk high-heat re-entry through the earth’s atmosphere at a speed of about 40,000 kmph, when the spacecraft’s heat shields withstood and protected the crew from temperatures around 2,760 degrees C, during which a plasma layer causes a brief communication blackout, finally splashing down in the Pacific Ocean on April 9.

While much has been made of the “record” set by Artemis-II and its crew for the longest distance any human has travelled from Earth, this is really an incidental outcome of the trajectory planned. Apollo-13 held the previous record of traveling just short of 400,000km from Earth, whereas Artemis-II saw the crew traveling 404,410 km. At its closest point, Orion was 6,507 km from the Moon’s surface. Other perhaps more significant records in the Artemis-II mission were carrying the first woman astronaut to travel around the Moon, Mission Specialist Christina Koch, and the first black man to travel beyond low-earth orbit, Pilot Victor Glover.  

Earthset

Far Side of the Moon

The highlight of the mission was undoubtedly the 40 minutes spent by the crew on board Integrity on the far side of the Moon, often mistakenly called the ‘dark side’ of the Moon, and their observations during that time. Due to the rotational speeds, orbital trajectories and periods of the Earth and Moon, only one side of the Moon always faces the Earth while the far side always remains unseen from Earth.

However, this does not mean that the far side is dark. Indeed, the far side receives as much sunlight as the near or Earth-facing side of the Moon. Therefore, the Artemis-II astronauts were able to gain an unprecedented view of the far side of the Moon for 40 minutes and more, including some viewing time of parts of the lunar surface beyond the horizon. Of course, during this time, Orion lost all radio or other contact with Earth since all communication paths were cut off by the Moon obstructing ‘line of sight’ to Earth.

Again, it is not as if no humans have ever seen the far side of the Moon before. In fact, all crew Members aboard lunar expeditions such as in the Apollo missions, whether only orbital or landing on the Moon, have seen parts of the far side of the Moon. However, focus of all those missions was on the potential or actual landing sites on the near side, and orbital trajectories were designed with this goal in mind. So those astronauts actually saw the far side of the Moon from closer altitudes than in Artemis-II which, however, also meant that they saw only parts of the lunar surface. The Orion spacecraft in the Artemis-II mission was over 4000 km from the Moon, so astronauts were able to see the whole lunar disc, which was also illuminated for part of the time.

The astronauts observed a vast region pitted by craters caused by impact of meteorites or space rocks, but with less of the characteristic large dark patches visible from Earth on the near side, believed to be the result of volcanic activity. At non-illuminated times, they also saw flashes of light caused by such impacts. They also observed brown, green and orange patches. All these and other observations may yield interesting insights.

The excitement of the crew was palpable from their emotional live reporting after emerging from the far side. Numerous high-resolution photographs from both hand-held and spacecraft-mounted cameras have also been transmitted back to Earth. Some spectacular visuals and photographs, one of an ‘Earthset’ or setting of the Earth behind the lunar horizon (Figure 1) analogous to a sunset, and one of a solar eclipse behind the Earth, were described by the Canadian astronaut as ‘mind-bending.’

A significant technological achievement was the use of the new Orion Optical Artemis-II Optical Communication System or O20 laser-based data communication system which enables data transmission at 260 mbps or megabits per second enabling high resolution data and 4k video transmission at much higher rates than radio transmission.

Oddities and Novelties in Orion

The virtually round-the-clock live telecast from Orion and reportage also brought to life some of the odd specifics of space flight in general and the Orion spacecraft in particular.

Needless to say, there have been many changes in spacecraft design and construction since those now seemingly ancient Apollo days. There is more space to move around, although the priority of functionality over comfort or aesthetics continues to prevail. Wires and cables are still all over the place. There are only two relatively small windows in Orion, so astronauts had to watch the amazing spectacles on display in pairs, and the windows got dirty quickly, prompting queries to mission control for protocols on how to clean them! Sleeping arrangements continue to be tricky, since there are no fixed beds and, in zero gravity, there is no up or down, so with each astronaut had to work out their own method and location. One chose to sleep in her sleeping bag hanging ‘upside down’ like a bat, that is, with her feet towards the top of the spacecraft, another in a corner near the communication consoles, and yet another just floating mid-air! All reported getting adequate and comfortable sleep!

Then there was the toilet issue that had notoriously caused problems from the outset of the flight. Orion is the first spacecraft with a separate, closed and dedicated toilet, although the International Space Station (ISS) of course has one since astronauts stay on board for many months continuously. NASA has designed a Universal Waste Management System (USMS) with versions for the ISS and for the Artemis programme. Urine is recycled into potable water consumed by astronauts. Fecal matter is stored in special pouches which are dumped into space on re-entry where they burn up. Efforts are underway to filter out potable water from this matter too as would be essential for longer trips such as to mars. On Artemis-II, the urine froze inside the system thus clogging it for subsequent use. The problem was solved after two days, but the liquid had to be vented out into space in a procedure that was shown live, liquid droplets floating off into space for who knows how long, possibly containing bacteria into outer space!

New US Attitude Toward Space Science

A surreal moment during Artemis-II was a live call from US President Donald Trump to the crew aboard Orion. In his usual manner, Trump claimed that he had rescued NASA from being closed down, generously funded NASA and so on, and also praised a well-known Canadian ice hockey player and Canadian Prime Minister Carney having earlier attacked and derided Canada and demanded that it become a State of the US! These resulted in awkward silence from the crew requiring rescue by mission control checking audio transmission!

But nothing can hide the fact that the overall NASA budget has been slashed by as much as 23-25% with the science programmes undergoing a 47% reduction in grants, threatening Mars sample returns and more than 40 science missions, while privileging prestige projects such as Artemis which project US dominance in space, as prioritised by President Trump’s new executive Space Policy announced recently.

There has been substantial resistance from scientists, think-tanks and even the US Congress which reversed cuts announced in his first term, fearing cut backs and job losses in many constituencies around the US. Trump and his hand-picked NASA Administrator are focusing on the space race with China, cost cutting in NASA and commercial ventures in space. The latter may also threaten the Artemis programme which, at least on paper, emphasises international collaboration in space for the common public good for all of humanity, whereas commercial activities in space such as for identification and utilisation of resources will most likely lead to profit-making and narrow corporate interests. US priorities may well push this new space race in problematic directions.

The writer is with the Delhi Science Forum and All India People’s Science Network. The views are personal.

Trump’s Attack on Science Escalates With Firing of Entire National Science Board


The impact of the loss of knowledge and research will be felt for decades — a legacy of Trump’s war on science.

By Sasha Abramsky , 

Truthout

May 7, 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event with the Artemis II astronauts, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch and commander Reid Wiseman in the Oval Office of the White House on April 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

Over the last few weeks, the Trump administration’s relentless war on the U.S.’s scientific infrastructure has picked up speed.

The New York Times’s Lisa Friedman reported in late April that over the past months, more than 1,500 top scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Research and Development have either been laid off, pushed into early retirement, or reassigned to desk jobs that have nothing to do with their field of expertise. Friedman’s article referenced a medical doctor with a specialty in lung disease being reassigned to a financial job and an epidemiologist being moved over to a job issuing permits for handling hazardous waste.

Less than 10 percent of the scientists — who run the gamut from biologists to epidemiologists, from toxicologists to greenhouse gas emissions specialists — now remain at the agency. Moving forward, they will be under a political commissar, and their research will have to “align with agency and administration priorities.” Translation: They will no longer be able to do the groundbreaking work on pollution and its health impacts that for decades made the office a world leader in environmental health research. Instead, their work will be co-opted to end regulations that have placed some limits on the levels of pollution that can be spewed into the environment.

The assault on the EPA’s scientific expertise, which closely resembles attacks on independent science by other authoritarian and totalitarian regimes over the past century, hasn’t occurred in a vacuum. Also last week, the 22 members of the National Science Board — which oversees the 76-year-old National Science Foundation (NSF) and helps allocate federal science grants in an independent, nonpartisan manner — were all fired on short notice, despite each of them being appointed for staggered six-year terms. This comes in the wake of a slew of Trump administration attacks on independent advisory boards to the EPA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.

“We hope it only means that new people will be put into place, but that the fundamental work of the National Science Foundation will continue forward,” Marsha Anderson Bomar, 2026 president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, told Truthout. She was not, however, terribly optimistic. “I would think we need to understand what future conditions [around climate and extreme weather] are likely to be so that we can design appropriate infrastructure,” she explained. “This has the potential to change that landscape.”

The memo to board members gave no reason for their firing, but simply said they were terminated “immediately” on behalf of Donald Trump. They joined the more than 30 percent of NSF staff who have left the agency since Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. They also join the more than 10,000 Ph.D.s, with more than 100,000 years of federal work experience between them, who have been severed from federal employment across a swath of agencies and departments during Trump’s second term.

Critics noted that the National Science Foundation, founded at the onset of the Cold War to boost national security, was due to release a potentially incendiary report in early May detailing how U.S. cuts to scientific research were ceding vital ground to China; it is unclear whether that report will now be released. Observers also pointed out that the National Science Board is legally required to oversee the NSF budget, but the Trump administration — which attempted to cut its $9 billion budget by more than 50 percent last year, and which is pushing similar cuts again this year — has ordered senior NSF staff not to reveal details of the potential budget cuts to National Science Board members. It is not known whether they have shared with National Science Board members details on the withdrawal of thousands of NSF grants that have already been issued to educational organizations around the country, but which are now being clawed back.

The National Science Board didn’t respond to repeated requests from Truthout for interviews.

Truthout contacted the NSF for clarification on this but received only a terse, one-sentence response: “Please reach out to the White House for comment.” Follow-up phone calls went unreturned.

Historically, the NSF has been one of the country’s largest funders of science, math, and engineering research; over the decades, its dollars have helped seed research on everything from the internet to gene editing. More recently, many of its grants have gone to scientists seeking to understand climate change and its likely impacts. Now, the Trump administration’s assault on the NSF and its oversight board risks marginalizing critical research, leaving U.S. universities and research centers less able to carry out cutting-edge projects, and creating a huge opportunity for other nations to fill the research void left by the United States.

Similar poorly conceived cuts are being proposed across the government. The 2027 White House budget request calls for billions of dollars in cuts to NASA, and the ending of a collaborative program that, in the Trump administration’s terms, “imposed climate extremism on developing countries,” but which in reality helped poorer countries adapt to a changing climate. It proposes eliminating the EPA’s $100 million “atmospheric protection program.” And it pushes a $5 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health.

Cuts of this scale will destroy decades of work and break research webs, both in the U.S. and overseas, that have been spun since World War II. There is no upside to these cuts. They will leave the United States less educated and less skilled, with fewer scientists and fewer cutting-edge research hubs.

Since nature abhors a vacuum, it’s a sure bet that other countries will eventually step in to fund at least some of these projects and to hire some of these scientists. Where once many of the world’s best and brightest flocked to the United States to showcase their talents, increasingly, they will go elsewhere. But those who can’t find work overseas, they will simply be left on the scrapheap, casualties of Trump’s extremist war on any science that doesn’t gel with his preconceived ideas of how the world works. The loss of knowledge and of research projects triggered by these cuts will, in consequence, be a huge loss for humanity over the coming decades. That, ultimately, will be the legacy of Trump’s destructive war on science.

'Tough spot': CNN host pities astronauts having to endure fawning president

Artemis II astronauts, NASA Commander Reid Wiseman and NASA Mission Specialist Christina Koch, with President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 29, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Sarah K. Burris

April 29, 2026 

ALTERNET

President Donald Trump welcomed the Artemis II astronauts to the White House after their incredible trip farther than any other human has traveled. He didn't want to talk about that, however.

CNN host Brianna Keilar noted that Trump talked about former FBI Director James Comey, crime in Washington, D.C. It was anything but a conversation about the Artemis II crew standing beside him.

"I think we should just also point out what a tough spot for these incredibly accomplished astronauts who have just renewed so much interest in space travel with their incredible achievement of this Artemis II mission," said Keilar. "You know, two of them are active duty military, one of them Canadian, by the way. So, you can understand being in the middle of a situation like this, where some of this is getting politicized. It's just it's extraordinary. It's bizarre."


She noted that the whole purpose of the Artemis crew being at the White House was to celebrate their accomplishments.

After a short conversation about Trump's latest threats on Iran, the anchors returned to the awkward astronauts.


Co-host Boris Sanchez said the president appeared to recognize the position he was putting the astronauts in by turning to complain about politics, among other issues.

"I don't want to get you guys involved. I can't imagine what you're thinking," Trump told the astronauts.

When Trump did get a question about NASA and moving the headquarters, Trump didn't appear to understand the question and asked the reporter to "rephrase" it. After she asked it again, he called on the NASA administrator and then made fun of his ears.


"Yeah, he said, I know [they're] in a tough spot. And then he made it tougher by kind of saying ... I know what you're thinking. Which also can be read as, 'you agree with me. I'm not going to have you speak about that," said longtime CNN broadcaster Tom Foreman.

Foreman mentioned the astronauts' accomplishments again, saying that what they did was a big deal for the United States, but the win-hungry president glossed over it.

"This flight of Artemis II is, honestly, I think, one of the few things that we can point to in a big way in this country in the past several months or whatever, where a lot of people left and right would agree, this was an amazing accomplishment," Foreman said. "And isn't it great that they went out there. This was an accomplishment that was built over many years, not just Donald Trump's years."


He explained that they were there to be honored, but Trump spent no time honoring them.

"He talked to the astronauts much longer in space than he did when they were in the room with him!" said Foreman.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making drastic cuts to NASA programs that made the Artemis II mission possible. Foreman called it, embracing his guests at the party while having their cars towed.

Republicans and Democrats have tried to convey to the White House that the U.S. will lose the space race to Chinese dominance and they will beat the U.S. to building a moon base and landing on Mars.


Foreman said that it could have very easily been a normal photo-op with a handshake and a wave, " But it turned into something very different."

Republicans have said that they will not allow Trump to make the 25 percent cuts to NASA that were proposed.

Science.org reported that the draft of the budget bill "is an early sign that Congress again thinks Trump has gone too far in cutting research."

Oil’s Last Stand and the End of the American Empire?

John K. White

 April 20, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Before Ronald Reagan became the 40th US president, he sold anything and everything from toasters to refrigerators as the TV host and travelling spokesperson for General Electric. Today, Donald Trump’s salesmanship reveals more about his unvarnished support for Big Oil and a staggering ignorance about the world, even compared to the Gipper. But with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and resultant loss of millions of barrels of shipped oil per day from the Persian Gulf in the ongoing US-led war against Iran, change is coming. Beleaguered citizens everywhere are looking for alternatives to oil and gas, sick of the endless war games, violence, cost, and loss of control in their lives.

With each hike in gas prices, lost fertilizer sales, and million-dollar spent missiles – all the result of failed Trump policy – the world is waking up to the charade. American leadership, influence, and empirical reach are failing with ever-declining returns as the United States extends itself further in another losing Middle East conflict over oil. Citing Winston Churchill in 1942 at a turning point in World War Two after the Allies repelled the Germans in North Africa, “It is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

Is the American attack on Iran another turning point in the transition from brown to green as governments across the globe attempt to deal with the fallout from lost oil supplies? Subsidizing energy costs to counter the growing impact will force the world to change its dependence on oil as lost public revenues pile up and domestic well-being suffers.

In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn noted that “Paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to recognize as acute.” Today, renewable energy is cleaner, safer, and cheaper than petroleum as wind, water, and sun continue to replace a century of dirt, danger, and greed. Over a century ago, horses lost out to the internal combustion engine, now losing ground to a green electric grid and chemical storage batteries. Renewables and the Revolution Revolution are driving the future.

Alas, the dominoes of change don’t fall cleanly or easily. Benjamin Franklin (1752) was lucky he didn’t electrocute himself when he stuck a key on the end of a kite string in an electric storm, showing that lightning was static electricity. Alessandro Volta (1799) understood that the legs of a frog twitched when touched by two different metals (copper and iron) because of their different electronegativities, sparking his idea for the first-ever electrochemical battery, while at the same time disproving his rival Luigi Galvani’s “animal electricity.” Edwin Drake (1859) almost gave up bashing for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, before raising enough crude to finance the first American commercial oil well, which set the United States on its path to riches and eventual collision course with a changing climate.

Change is slow until it isn’t, from Aristotle (geocentric universe) to Copernicus (heliocentric universe), from Newton (gravity) to Einstein (relativity). Thomas Edison (1882) in Lower Manhattan and Nikola Tesla (1900) at Niagara Falls developed the electric grid that lit the world, Russell Ohl (1939) and Walter Brattain (1954) developed the differentially doped p-n junction at Bell Labs that lead to the transistor and photovoltaic (PV) solar cell, and James Hansen’s report to Congress (1988) helped show how industrial carbon dioxide changes the atmosphere and climate for the worse.

Each change remakes the economy and our everyday lives. Before coal ceded to oil, Great Britain ruled the waves (more than half the world’s wealth). Today, the US produces a quarter of global GDP ($30 trillion). But as economist Giovanni Arrighi noted, wealth-accumulating empires fail when finance dominates manufacturing, citing Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States. In the US today, a few super-rich control most of the country’s wealth, while $1 billion a day is spent on war and the public debt passes $39 trillion (up $3 trillion since the start of Trump 2.0!). Socialism for the rich. Poverty for the rest.

China is the main beneficiary, a next empire in waiting. As in the past, Spanish sails gave way to bigger Dutch rigging that fell to British coal that in turn lost to American oil, China is now reaping the spoils of a new paradigm – the sun. While oil and gas imports decline from a clogged Middle East transit route, China continues to sell more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles than any other country. Chinese renewable energy is winning today’s shift from old to new. Exponential growth rules as costs decrease and uptake increases.

With an untenable surcharge on imported petroleum since the start of the American attack on Iran, EU citizens are spending €500 million more per day in fuel. The worst is in Germany, where consumers aren’t as sheltered as in other European countries. Ireland saw a week-long protest when farmers, fishermen, and truck drivers blockaded cities to protest higher fuel costs. The impact is felt everywhere with reduced social spending, anger toward oil companies, and customers queuing to buy off-the-shelf, plug-in solar panels.

In Pakistan, rooftop solar panels and EV sales are rising. In the Philippines, gas rationing has begun. Canada removed federal taxes on gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel. But while citizens around the world suffer, American oil companies profit even more from US military action in Iran. Is Trump rewarding his Big Oil friends who so generously donated to his election?

According to an analysis by The Guardian, “The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30 million every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran.” Top of the list are the main global warming deniers, Saudi Aramco, Gazprom, and ExxonMobil. In response, an energy policy expert at the E3G think tank called for “taxes on windfall profits to accelerate the transition to green energy, rather than deepen dependence on fossil fuels.” Indeed, why should Big Oil prosper as governments respond by making fossil fuels cheaper, instead of working to build new green infrastructure?

Clearly “the system” doesn’t work, be it unregulated capitalism or unchecked presidential firepower. But change is coming. We have no choice, because of the earth’s limited petroleum supply (44 years?) and our worsening climate (430 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide). Fortunately, solar power scales via manufacturing not geology (technology > extraction) – no moving parts. Unfortunately, Big Oil is the friction in the system – it’s all about the money. But we are the answer. In the words of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch after returning home from the moon, “Planet Earth, you are a crew.”

Financial wealth doesn’t define a nation. In fact, excess money management signals the end, when nurses, teachers, firefighters, and everyday workers can’t pay the monthly bills, can’t save for a rainy day, can’t keep the wolves from the door because transactional players are gaming the system, aided and abetted by a beholden government and war-mongering president who wants to sell even more blood-soaked oil.

Why do we continue to pay for yesterday’s dirty world when the future is clean, green, and safe? It’s time to bet on a future we all support.

John K. White, a former lecturer in physics and education at University College Dublin and the University of Oviedo. He is the editor of the energy news service E21NS and author of The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Do The Math!: On Growth, Greed, and Strategic Thinking (Sage, 2013). He can be reached at: johnkingstonwhite@gmail.com