National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts and scientists were not present at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX-2025) in Delhi, likely a result of the budgets cuts for the body under US President Donald Trump's second term.
Delegates from 37 countries are attending the conference but NASA remains absent even as the US administration has proposed to cut the space agency's budget by 24.3 per cent with major organisational restructuring underway.
Further, a conflict of interest between NASA and Elon Musk's SpaceX is likely to also have played a key role. Some experts claimed that amid the NASA funding cut, fears are that many space contracts will go to SpaceX.
Musk is one of Trump's closest advisors and oversees his cost-cutting efforts for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, Trump's pick to lead NASA, has flown to space with SpaceX twice -- raising further concerns about conflicts of interest.
NASA's absence at GLEX conference comes when Musk's affordable internet service Starlink has come closer to its India launch, after it received a Letter of Intent (LoI) from the Department of Telecom (DoT) after the company agreed to comply with the new national security guidelines for satcom operators.
When asked about the absence of the American space body, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman V Narayanan refused to comment on individual space agencies.
At the GLEX summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said on Wednesday that India was marching ahead with renewed confidence in the field of space exploration and its astronauts' footprints will be on the Moon. He added that Mars and Venus were also on the the country's radar for exploration missions, apart from setting up the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035.
At NASA, workforce reduction and closure of several key offices began as early as March after an order by Trump directing that federal agencies be streamlined. Among the office shut was the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility branch within the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, a program aimed at by the administration across various organisations.
