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| NASA Astronaut and Associate Administrator for Education, Leland Melvin, talks to children during STEM event at Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Arlington, Virginia, Jan 13, 2013. CREDIT: NASA/Bill Ingalls |
By now, I hope you've heard that NASA has put into suspended animation many of its educational and non-media public outreach, including their STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education programs. This is until it can review all of those programs.
It sounds like an April Fools' Day joke, doesn't it? Believe me, it’s real. If you hadn't heard about all this, it’s probably because the various news media haven’t covered it much. It seems to me that the American people (and the world) ought to know what's happening.
I understand that NASA was forced to make some cuts in order to abide by the sequester. But, I’d never have thought our space agency would even consider pausing or deleting so much of something so important to the future of NASA and of the United States as education and outreach.
I hope that these cuts are temporary, a way to force Congress into repealing the sequester for NASA. If it's not, and these cuts are made permanent, the world will lose something special — that NASA magic. [Petition Asks White House to Reverse NASA Outreach Sequester Cuts]
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