The History Behind the Long-Dead Space Council Trump Wants to Revive

The Trump administration is planning for the future of the space program by throwing it back to the ’90s. Vice President Mike Pence said this week that President Trump will, “in very short order,” bring back a high-level advisory council on space activities that has been dead for nearly 25 years. The remarks were the first public confirmation by the White House that the administration wants to resurrect the National Space Council, an idea first floated by Trump’s policy advisers a month before he was elected. Pence teased the council at the end of a signing ceremony Tuesday in the Oval Office for the first NASA authorization bill in seven years, a piece of mostly symbolic legislation that lays out the space agency’s long-term directives, like going to Mars.