NASA could lose its "crown jewel" - the Mars programme

By Gaby Chwallek Feb 12, 2012, 6:04 GMT

Washington - The Mars programme became NASA's only remaining crown jewel after the shuttle programme was closed down last year.

Now, US scientists who have been briefed about the proposed 2013 US budget to be released on Monday say they expect the projects that sent rovers to Mars and probes to other planets is on the chopping block.

President Barack Obama is looking for ways to reduce the giant US deficit. The Pentagon and other major government branches face cutbacks.

According to media reports, the scientists believe that NASA will be forced to halt two planned Mars missions with the European Space Agency ESA that had been planned for 2016 and 2018.

The Russian space programme, which has already taken over the transport of all astronauts to the International Space Station, is waiting in the wings to step in. Last month, Roskosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin confirmed that his agency was negotiating with the European agency about collaborating on the two-stage 'ExoMars' project.

That prospect is particularly painful for NASA. After two setbacks with its Mars programme, the agency succeeded with a series of projects, putting three probes into orbit around the red planet, landing three others. And the rover Opportunity is still tapping its way around the rocky Mars surface, eight years beyond its expected lifetime.

Small wonder, then that Ed Weiler, former head of NASA's science mission directorate, calls the Mars programme 'one of the crown jewels of NASA.'

'In what irrational Homer Simpson world would we single it out for disproportionate cuts?' he told ScienceInsider, referring to the sardonic animated US television series.

The Obama budget is expected to drop funding for planetary science from 1.5 billion dollars in the current 2012 budget to 1.2 billion dollars in 2013, with further cuts through 2017, according to the Washington Post, which quoted scientists who had been briefed on the budget.

'We're doing all this great science and taking the public along with us,' Jim Bell, an Arizona Syate University scientist who works on the rover programme, was quoted as saying.

NASA's total proposed 2013 budget is 17.8 billion dollars, down from the current 18.5 billion dollars, reports said. While that cut would not be so drastic, Obama's budget would prioritize human space transport, agency spokesman David Weaver told the Post in an email.