Trump campaign pulls ad about SpaceX launch after astronaut’s wife calls it propaganda

The Trump campaign took down a video late Thursday trumpeting NASA's return to human spaceflight after harsh criticism that it was politicizing the event and violating NASA advertising rules.

The video featured President Donald Trump watching last week's launch from the Kennedy Space Center along with the slogan "Make Space Great Again" and historic footage from the Apollo era.

On Twitter, Karen Nyberg, a former astronaut and wife of Doug Hurley, who was carried to the International Space Station by the SpaceX launch, blasted the advertisement, saying she found "it disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong."

Hurley and Bob Behnken were the first American astronauts to be blasted into orbit from American soil since the Space Shuttle was retired in 2011.

The event was watched by millions and provided a moment of inspiration amid protests over George Floyd's death and the fear of the global pandemic.

But the ad was quickly attacked as using an event of engineering and science for political gain. But internet posts are hard to delete forever; the ad surfaced on another YouTube page.

The ad also runs against NASA regulations that prohibit the agency from endorsing "a commercial product, service or activity."

"Astronauts or employees who are currently employed by NASA cannot have their names, likenesses or other personality traits displayed in any advertisements or marketing material," the rules say.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

An online petition urging the campaign to remove the ad had more than 7,000 signatures by Friday. "NASA and the space industry as a whole have long tried to stay out of politics, and, until this Administration, that goal was at least partly attained," the petition read.

Trump has made space a priority, and has sought to increase NASA's budget significantly to fuel an attempt to return astronauts to the bay by 2024 under a dramatically expedited timeline that many think impossible.

Trump bragged recently that his administration has "reinvigorated" NASA, which he wrongly said "was dead as a door nail, but now it's very much alive."

NASA began relying on the private sector for launches to the space station under President George W. Bush when it hired SpaceX and a company then called Orbital Sciences to fly cargo and supplies there. Under President Barack Obama, the space agency extended the program to hire two companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to fly its astronauts in what was a controversial decision, derided by many who thought the private sector should not be entrusted with the lives of NASA's astronauts.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine, however, has gone out of his way to praise his predecessor, Charlie Bolden, who served as the head of the space agency under Obama.

"Charlie Bolden did just yeoman's work in order to get this program off the ground, get if going," he said in the days leading up to the launch. "And here we are, all these years later, having this success."

He added that the program “demonstrates the success when you have continuity of purpose going from one administration to the next.”