US would kill joint European Mars missions in budget plan

Feb 13, 2012, 22:42 GMT

Washington - The US space agency NASA is abandoning two planned joint Mars missions with the European Space Agency, according to budget documents released Monday.

The move comes amid deep cuts in planetary science in President Barack Obama's 2013 budget proposal.

The planned ExoMars programme was to have sent an orbiter to search for methane in the Red Planet's atmosphere in 2016 and then a rover to the surface in 2018.

NASA's contribution would have been 1.4 billion dollars, with ESA contributing 1.2 billion dollars, according to website Space.com.

Obama's proposed budget for the year beginning October 1 includes 17.7 billion dollars for NASA, 59 million dollars less than in 2012. The agency will shift its dollars toward space technology and manned commercial missions away from planetary science, which would see a 20 per cent decrease to 1.2 billion dollars.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke of difficult decisions, but said he believed the budget was stable and would allow the agency to focus on a wide variety of programmes.

NASA has shifted its focus since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet last year and has been supporting the development of commercial spacecraft to ferry astronauts into near-Earth orbit.

The budget proposal now goes to Congress, where Obama faces stiff resistance for much of his plan.