A complex project aimed at retrieving rock and dirt samples from Mars has long been a top priority for NASA, with proponents arguing the mission could answer the age-old question of whether life once existed on the red planet.
A complex project aimed at retrieving rock and dirt samples from Mars has long been a top priority for NASA, with proponents arguing the mission could answer the age-old question of whether life once existed on the red planet.
The Perseverance rover, manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is collecting the samples. But lawmakers are fighting over whether getting them back to Earth for study is viable in a tight budget environment.
The battle lines are regional, not partisan: California lawmakers backing work being done on the Mars Sample Return program at the Pasadena complex pitted against Maryland and Virginia supporters of the agency’s sprawling Goddard Space Flight Center, among others.
The Mars mission is also facing serious questions about its viability following an internal NASA review that determined the program would take longer, and cost far more, than originally forecast.
The GOP-controlled House has taken the Biden administration’s side, proposing full funding for the Mars program, while the Democratic-controlled Senate has sought to divert money to other projects.
„The mission is way over budget,“ Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Chair Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said. „It’s not at all clear what kind of science that will produce for us, so I think given the constraints within the budget, we have to look at putting the money where it’s going to have the most impact.“
Not taking any chances, NASA is preparing for the worst. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced large-scale layoffs last week—8 percent of its workforce. The move follows NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s direction that the agency should prepare for a $300 million fiscal 2024 Mars project appropriation, as proposed in the Senate’s Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill.
The Mars program’s future is among the big decisions facing appropriators as they negotiate the final Commerce-Justice-Science bill. That measure has a March 8 deadline in the current stopgap law, part of roughly four-fifths of total fiscal 2024 discretionary funding due on that date.
The Senate wants to slash the account by 63 percent, buttressed by NASA’s review, which found the program would cost at least $3 billion more than expected. Moreover, the report accompanying the Senate bill directs NASA—if the agency reports that it can’t find a way to live within an earlier $5.3 billion projection—to „either provide options to de-scope or rework MSR or face mission cancellation.“
By contrast, House appropriators included the full $949.3 million Mars program amount President Joe Biden requested in their Commerce-Justice-Science bill.
„It’ll be the most exciting series of samples that we will have in our possession when it does come back,“ said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif, whose district includes the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, which operates the facility. „But all of this is being undermined by cuts that will stop all of the tremendous progress we have made.“
Congress to-date has appropriated $1.74 billion for the Mars program, which the most recent once-every-decade survey of planetary scientists called NASA’s highest robotic exploration priority.
But the effort to retrieve the samples is challenging, to put it mildly.
