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Mars rovers teeter on brink of financial doom |
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Written by Derek Kessler on
Wednesday, 26 March 2008
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 For the past several years NASA has struggled with its budget. While it has not recieved any funding adjustments in nearly a decade, the space agency has been ordered to develop a new launch system to replace the space shuttle, finish the International Space Station, and complete all the rest of what it has to do with what's left over. And what's left over simply isn't enough. The Jet Propulsion Lab was recently informed by NASA that it had to cut $4 million from the $20 million used annually to run the two Mars rovers. The JPL responded by saying that the budget cut will force one of the two rovers into early retirement.
The $20 million annual operating costs go towards facilities maintenance at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA, payroll, and most important, satellite time to manage transmissions to the rovers. The cut would force the JPL to shut down Spirit and resort to sending new commands up to Opportunity every other day instead of the daily communications taking place today.
Both rovers are still in excellent operating condition and hibernating through the Martian winter. The solar-powered probes landed on Mars in January 2004 and having performed nearly flawlessly through their original 90-day mission have been repeatedly extended to perform continuing science operations on the red planet. The Mars Odyssey orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars also since 2001, is also facing budget cuts.
In addition to the fiscal year 2008 cut of $4 million, the Mars Exploration Rover program was told to expect another $4 million to be cut from the budget in 2009. NASA said that the cost cuts were needed to help finance the next generation of Mars probes.
After news of the budget cuts was released by the JPL, NASA rescinded the budget cut reccomendations, stating that neither of the Mars rovers will be shut down. NASA is still facing a budget shortfall on multiple fronts and the upcoming US presidential election has many NASA officials (off the record) concerned about the fiscal future of the agency.
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