President Trump focused his weekly address on the $19.5 billion NASA spending bill he signed on Tuesday, which he celebrated as being a bipartisan piece of legislation during a time when agreement across the aisle is no so easy to come by.
“At a time when Washington is consumed with the daily debates of our Nation, I was proud that Congress came together overwhelmingly to reaffirm our Nation’s commitment to expanding the frontiers of knowledge,” Trump said in the video released Saturday morning.
His message began with video footage of Americans celebrating the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, during which humans landed on the moon for the first time. The president said with the NASA Transition Authorization Act, “we renew our national commitment to NASA’s mission of exploration and discovery.”
Trump also spoke, with a soaring musical score playing in the background, about scientist Robert Williams, who in 1995 decided to point NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope seemingly empty-looking region of space.
At a time when “taxpayers were spending billions and billions of dollars on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope,” Trump said Williams was rewarded with the risk he took. “In that tiny patch of sky, the Hubble Deep Field showed thousands of lights. Each brilliant spot represented not a single star but an entire galaxy,” Trump said.
He said this week’s NASA reauthorization will continue progress on Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which is set to launch next year.
“The Webb Telescope is set to launch next year. It will gaze back through time and space to the very first stars and the earliest galaxies in the universe. We can only imagine what incredible visions it will bring.”
