Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA
Next Monday, 20th January, Donald Trump once again becomes President of the United States, and so this week we’re looking at some potential impacts this might have for the Earth Observation (EO) sector. However, it should be noted that this is an opinion piece as during the Presidential campaign there was no detailed space policy outlined, and so these thoughts are based on the approach from his first presidency and other hints.
Elon Musk and SpaceX
It’s not possible to talk about the beginning of the second Donald Trump Presidency without talking about Elon Musk – obviously, this is even more relevant when talking about the space sector, given his involvement with SpaceX.
The second key element is Musk’s co-leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which includes a focus on reducing the US civil service workforce, and could certainly see programmes within NASA, NOAA, USGS or other governmental departments targeted – equally, supporting the EO thoughts below, it is possible there could be a push towards more industry collaborations, in the way SpaceX has already established. For example, there is potential for SpaceX to take over/lead the race for humans to go to Mars.
One thing is for certain, is that Elon Musk will influence US Space Policy whether formally or informally, as a strong advisor to Trump over the coming years.
Earth Observation
In Trump’s first presidency, there was a strong indication that his preference was that EO should be funded by the private sector, rather than from government funds – this was demonstrated by the pivoting of the NASA budget away from EO, instead put funding towards human space travel and military programmes. There is nothing to suggest that the new administration have changed their approach on this – in fact, as noted above with Elon on board, it may strengthen the focus on human space travel as he has often talked about humans going to Mars.
In the first term, the one EO programme that survived budget cutbacks was Landsat, with support for the Landsat-9 satellite was maintained during other budget cutbacks. Certainly, it would not be a surprise if multiple EO programmes are scaled back or cancelled, and it is unknown whether Landsat will be passed over again.
We can expect to see a further pivot towards commercial companies providing EO data, which could be benefit for existing EO satellite companies such as Planet. There is already a much larger usage of commercial data through NASA’s Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition programme, and other initiatives such as the National Geospatial-intelligence Agency reached out to the industry towards the end of last year, in this case, to create labelled data for Artificial Intelligence. It will be interesting to see how the work of DOGE or any budget realignment may, or may not, impact such programmes.
Any movement towards more commercial companies providing EO data will probably also see an increase in researchers and organisations moving towards Copernicus data, given it is free-to-access.
Climate Change
Linked to EO is the issue of climate change. Trump has already indicated that, once again, he will withdraw the USA from the Paris Climate Agreement – the legally binding UN treaty on climate change – and has indicated that he may also withdraw from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that underpins global climate change actions. This is coupled with indications from his campaign trail of wanting to increase drilling for fossil fuels, drilling in the Arctic, etc.
Given the apparent lack of commitment to climate change for the incoming administration, it is not likely that there will be support for EO datasets or satellites that are predominantly focused on climate change. There are also already reports of scientists and researchers replacing the term climate change with other more acceptable terms such as air pollution, flooding, fire risk, etc.
Again, it will be interesting to see if there is greater uptake of the Copernicus data programmes such as their Climate Change Initiatives.
Conclusion
Currently, we don’t know what direction President-elect Trump will take with space; however, in his first term he was not supportive of EO and earth science. Certainly, in his campaign he expressed support for human travel to Mars and enhancing US Space Force, and given he will have Elon Musk at his side, these areas are likely to remain a key focus.
It is going to be interesting, worrying and fascinating to see how the EO sector fares in the coming months and years.
