Trump's latest claims on space and Iran



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What Trump said

If you look at our facilities, they were practically closed. There was crabgrass growing on the tracks. And now they are vital and we – we do – we go to Mars. We stop at the moon.

President Trump, like some of his predecessors, has reorganized the government's space program. But space exploration did not stop until it took office in 2017. In fact, NASA has been aiming for a trip to Mars for years.

Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society, a non-profit organization that promotes space exploration, said the Trump administration "was exceptionally attentive to space," while noting that she "generally pursued policies over the last 15 years and had a rapidly maturing commercial strategy ". the space industry which took decades to develop. "

In 2004, President George W. Bush proposed a return to the moon as a springboard to Mars. President Barack Obama canceled this lunar program in 2010, preferring to focus on reaching an asteroid and then March, while encouraging the government to finance commercial flight in space.

Trump has since abandoned the idea of ​​asteroids and refocused on the moon, considering a planned landing for 2024 (though unlikely) before reaching Mars. It also reinstated the National Council of Space, "which has taken important steps to propose regulatory updates regarding the commercial use of space and space traffic management" said Mr. Dreier. And more recently, Mr. Trump has authorized the creation of the US Space Command, precursor of the army Space force he is often champion.

Beyond these mission changes, NASA continued to function and reach milestones.

During the Obama administration, the Curiosity rover Landed on Mars, the New Horizons spacecraft captured images of Pluto and the Juno probe successfully entered Jupiter's orbit.

Although NASA's annual budget is only a fraction of what it was during the big space race, it has oscillated between $ 16 and $ 21 billion over the past 10 years. Trump proposed cutting NASA funding in his budgets for 2018 and 2019, although Congress ignored these suggestions.

What Trump said

"Germany, France, Russia and many other countries have won a lot with Iran. And we did not make money with Iran, it was just one of the many disadvantages of the deal. "

As part of the Iran nuclear deal, the United States and European countries lifted economic sanctions against the country in early 2016, after international inspectors had concluded that it had held the promise to dismantle large parts of its nuclear program.

The agreement also lifted the barriers to international trade with Iran. Mr. Trump probably referred to trade surpluses when he claimed that other countries had "made a lot of money with" the country. (Although, as the New York Times explained, trade balances are not fundamentally good or bad.)

In 2016, the three countries listed by Mr Trump all had a merchandise trade surplus with Iran: 2.2 billion dollars for Germany, 1.3 billion dollars for Russia and 918 million dollars for France, according to UN data.

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