President Trump said on Wednesday the United States had a “good shot” at landing astronauts on the moon before the end of his second term as he celebrated the crew of Artemis II, who in a matter of weeks took a journey around the moon, back to Earth and to the Oval Office.
“That was a lot of rocket under them,” Mr. Trump said alongside the four-member crew, each sporting a NASA jacket. “I don’t know how they do it — I wouldn’t want to do it!”
Mr. Trump has, however, made clear that he does want Americans journeying deeper into the cosmos to be a part of his legacy. The meeting with the Artemis II crew comes as his administration has proclaimed big goals for space exploration, including a “lunar base camp” and even an eventual trip to Mars.
After overhauling its launch schedule earlier this year, NASA is now aiming for two moon landings in 2028, before Mr. Trump leaves office.
“We have a shot at it,” Mr. Trump said. “We don’t like to say definitely because then you say, ‘Oh we failed, we failed.”
“We’re ahead of schedule,” he added.
Even as he celebrated the unity that comes with space travel, global crises hung over the brief visit to the Oval Office by the astronauts. Mr. Trump fielded questions from reporters about the Iran war, as well as a “long talk” he had with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
He said he was not aware of the Supreme Court’s decision that dealt a blow to the Voting Rights Act, which had been issued hours before, saying he was too busy spending time with the astronauts who “have captivated the attention of the whole world.”
Mr. Trump’s celebration of the Artemis II crew came as his administration has proposed making big cuts to NASA’s education, research and diversity programs, while boosting the amount of money designated for space exploration.
The budget proposal, which was released as the Artemis II crew was still in space earlier this month, would cut NASA’s overall budget by $5.6 billion, or 23 percent. Nearly half of the funding for NASA’s science programs would be cut, according to Casey Dreier, the chief of space policy for the Planetary Society, a nonprofit that promotes space exploration.
“The cuts to science would literally turn off dozens of missions in space right now, returning incredibly rare and unique science,” Mr. Dreier said.
It would also probably turn off programs that educate and train young people to become future NASA scientists or even astronauts.
“It really just kind of undermines the entire kind of pipeline of productive scientific exploration of the country,” Mr. Dreier said.
One program that would be terminated is NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project, which issued millions of dollars in grants to historically Black colleges and universities with the hopes of building a more diverse NASA work force in the future.
The proposed budget did, however, increase NASA’s budget for landing astronauts on the moon by about $731 million. And there was about $10 billion of funding, dedicated mostly for space exploration, included in Mr. Trump’s tax and domestic policy legislation passed last year.
“We’re back in the business of launching moon rockets with frequency,” Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said on Wednesday.
Mr. Trump also said he was interested in not only more NASA launches, but also in releasing information about any craft from space.
“It’s been on the minds of people for a long time,” Mr. Trump said. “They want to find out about the U.F.O.s.”
He said that he would soon release information about the unidentified flying objects and that “some of it’s going to be very interesting to people.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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