SPACE: Will Europe’s flagship space science missions survive NASA’s budget cuts?

Flagship European space science missions conducted in collaboration with NASA face a possible combined funding shortfall of nearly $2 billion due to budget cuts put forward by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump. The European Space Agency hopes its member states will come to the rescue.

Europe’s flagship space science missions may be worthwhile, but they aren’t ours, so why are we funding them?   It’s only about twenty bucks per American taxpayer, but do that for 10,000 other foreign agencies and projects, and it starts to add up.