The Senate noted deep skepticism about NASA’s ambitious plan to bring back soil samples from the Red Planet, expressing concern about the cost and feasibility of the mission.
Senate confiscation just apply $300 million in fiscal 2024 funding for the Mars mission — less than a third of NASA’s $949 million requested budget.
Specialists also said they were very skeptical about whether NASA could complete the mission, known as the Mars Sample Return (MSR).
The TC Subcommittee, Justice, Science and Related Agencies wrote in Appropriations Bill Determine funding for 2024.
It added that it would cancel the $300 million earmarked for the mission if the agency could not ensure the total cost did not exceed $5.3 billion. NASA estimates that the cost of developing the mission, which was originally $4.4 billion, has grown to more than $9 billion.
Specifically, these prices represent only the cost of developing and testing mission components. It does not include launch costs or operating costs for the planned five-year mission term. Nor does it include the construction of new sample receiving facilities which may be required to handle rock and soil samples.
The samples were collected by NASA’s newest Mars rover — Perseverance — which launched to Mars in 2020. The rover was sent to Mars to help find signs of life, and was tasked with taking samples from the Martian surface and subsurface. To date, Perseverance has collected 18 of the 43 planned samples.
The ability to collect and study samples could provide scientists with unprecedented data about Mars, helping to fill in the gaps about how the planet has changed over time. They can help scientists understand whether Mars is habitable and may even contain signs of life – both past and present.
NASA is working with the European Space Agency to develop it miss MSR. As part of this plan, NASA will build a sample Lander scheduled for launch in 2028, although the Senate and some agency members have doubts about a viable launch date.
As NASA worked to develop the technology needed for the mission, costs had ballooned. Early estimates put the cost of the mission at around $4 billion, but according to a panel report, the space agency has already spent more than $1 billion. The subcommittee also noted that its planned 2028 launch date was too tight and likely to fall, adding to cost overruns.
NASA also convened an Institutional Review Board to review the MRS mission and determine the best path to success. The board is expected to release its results in late August or early September.
A regular poll of the scientific community designed to cite NASA’s important mission last year estimated that MSR would cost about $5.3 billion, which is the limit now set by the Senate.
If NASA cannot guarantee completion of such a large mission, the Mars program will face cancellation, and the Senate will divert $300 million toward other missions, with most of it going to the Artemis moon program. This mission aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a small space station in lunar orbit.
Scientists in the same poll said the Mars mission was too critical, and it was worth asking Congress for more money to complete it. They argue that the request will help ensure that no additional funds are taken from other scientific missions.
But NASA faces significant headwinds in getting more funding, as congressional negotiators feel pressure to keep overall government spending in line with the budget cap agreement reached between President Biden and Chairman Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this year. .
Senator Jerry Moran (RK.) has described himself as a supporter of NASA, but acknowledged during NASA’s funding considerations in the Senate Appropriations Committee last week that cuts would pose “substantial challenges” in sustaining all of the agency’s programs.
“We have been able to protect the most important national priority in NASA’s budget, which is returning to the moon and maintaining our strategic advantage in space,” said Moran, the top Republican on the spending subpanel that oversees funding for NASA.
The cost of the Mars program has increased for a number of reasons.
There were technical flaws in the original mission concept, which included one lander and a small sample recovery rover. There was also a huge glitch in the mission’s technical requirements meaning that more hardware was required, which cost more money.
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Staffing issues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have also delayed several missions, including MSR.
This is not the first time a mission has drastically exceeded budget or the first time a major NASA mission has faced cancellation.
The James Webb Space Telescope faced possible cancellation in 2011, but went ahead with a launch in 2021 despite a budget bloat that ultimately cost $10 billion. NASA’s Artemis moon program is also huge exceed the planned budgetThe cost could be as high as $93 billion by the time astronauts reach the lunar surface.
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2023-07-19 11:54:17
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