Mars Sample Return and missions to study other planets and celestial bodies, including lunar efforts, face big cuts and delays.
Dreams of exploring the cosmos have crashed up against the harsh reality of budget cuts in the United States. Congressional approval of the 2024 federal budget earlier this year left NASA with roughly half a billion dollars less than the agency had in 2023 — and Mars science has taken the biggest hit.
“That makes it easy to take on new projects,” Dreier says. “There’s room to grow. Everybody can win. And that has ended.” “We know we are definitely in an imperfect environment, and we acknowledge this is a very challenging time,” Nicola Fox, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said in MarchNASA’s Mars Sample Return mission had intended to bring rock and soil samples to Earth from the Red Planet by 2033. But even before these budget cuts, questions emerged about whether the ambitious program, prioritized in 2022 as part of planetary scientists’).
NASA proposes spending just $300 million on the sample return mission this year and $200 million next year, which is just enough to string the program along as its future is figured out. And though it’s still unclear how much money NASA will receive next year, the 2025 budget requested by the Biden administration has been pared back.
The meter-wide DAVINCI probe is slated to take images and chemistry measurements of the Venusian atmosphere, but budget cuts might delay the mission.All this will mean less near-term research on the formation and dynamics of planets and their moons. “We forget how little we’ve explored the solar system we live in,” Dreier says. Scientists are crying out to explore it, he adds, and that’s all being pushed back.
While Smith expects that future Artemis missions might see delays, she thinks there’s enough momentum to ensure they’ll take off at some point. There’s a broad coalition in Congress who believe it to be important for staying ahead of China, which also aims to land people on the moon in the coming years.
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