NASA, which learned just the other week that its budget was being cut with its planetary science allocation taking the hardest hit, has been in money-juggling mode in an attempt to scrape together the funding to make high-priority missions happen while pushing other, less urgent undertakings to the back burner or tabling them altogether. Result: the space agency is robbing from the outer planets to pay for a Mars mission.
Right now, NASA is in a bad way when it comes to finances for science missions to the planets. This situation was made especially evident when NASA announced that it was shelving all future 'flagship' missions to the planets. What is a 'flagship?' It is simply the most expensive in the 3-tiered system of planetary mission. As things stand right now, the Curiosity rover that is on its way to Mars right now (1909 VDB penny in tow) appears to be the last flagship in the foreseeable future.
Before the 2013 budget proposal was announced, NASA had been planning missions to the outer solar system, specifically to Europa, the ice-covered Jovian moon that could very well harbor a deep ocean under the ice, which could, in turn, support life. Ever since the Voyagersflew past Europa, scientists the world over have dreamed of sending a probe there. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, this all but certain flagship will not happen anytime soon and much of the outer planetary fund's cash will be diverted to a scaled-back Mars mission, instead.
Unfortunately, despite canceling outer planetary aspirations, NASA is still needing to scrape together some serious money in order launch its Mars Next Generation mission, a scaled-back planetary probe almost certain to be an orbiter due to the $700 million budget, in either 2018 or 2020.
For NASA, Next Generation is simply a way of keeping the American presence on Mars going until more ambitious missions can be funded.
Until the 2013 budget was made official, NASA had been planning on partnering with the European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia's Rocosmos space agency on a pair of Mars missions. ExoMars, set to launch in 2016, would be a gas-detecting orbiter designed to study the Martian atmosphere while a still unnamed 2018 mission would be a return sample probe (Mars-Grunt, anyone?). Now, in light of the deep planetary science cuts, NASA will be leaving the Europeans to go it alone. The money saved from the international venture will then be put toward Next Generation.
Interestingly, just after pulling out of a pair of European missions, NASA chief Charles Bolden said that he was hoping for international cooperation on Mars Next Generation. Only time will tell whether NASA gets a helping hand or a cold shoulder in return.
Needless to say, for an agency that has launched as many interplanetary probes as NASA in the past 15 years, these are trying times when even an orbiter requires pinching every penny possible.
For more details:
Space News
For some commentary:
NASA and our children
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