The Golden Age of Planetary Exploration is in Grave Danger from Deep Cuts in the President’s Proposed Budget.

The planetary exploration program has delivered a golden age of robotic exploration of the Solar System that over the past decade that has included a long series of stunningly successful missions. Among many examples are the Mars rovers which have discovered that standing bodies of water once existed on Mars, indicating past habitable environments; the Cassini mission to Saturn which discovered water erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, imaged previously unseen structure in the rings, and is mapping methane lakes and seas on Saturn's moon Titan; MESSANGER which is now orbiting and mapping Mercury, revealing how terrestrial planets evolve; Dawn, which is orbiting and mapping the asteroid Vesta, revealing the earliest history of planet formation; and Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and GRAIL which are orbiting our Moon and exploring deeply into its structure and origins.  Other low-cost missions have returned samples of a comet and the solar wind.  These missions have revolutionized our understanding of Earth, its origins, and its place within the solar system and the larger universe.  The planetary science program complements and extends the discoveries and breakthroughs in earth science, astrophysics, and heliophysics.

The Planetary Science community recently finished its Decadal Survey under the auspices of the National Research Council of the National Academies. Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022 recommends to NASA a program of balanced exploration and scientific analysis, tempered by fiscal realism, which builds on the immense progress of the last decade to continue expanding our understanding of our solar system, and search for evidence of past or even current life elsewhere in our solar system. The current golden age of planetary exploration — the result of years of effort by scientists and engineers supported at relatively low cost by a fascinated public and bipartisan political support — is in grave danger from deep budget cuts just as the next wave of discoveries beckons.

The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2013 budget for NASA focuses almost all the Agency’s financial cuts onto the planetary science program. The Planetary Science Division budget falls in FY13 to $1.2 billion from a current $1.5 billion, a drop of 20%. These cuts will force NASA to cancel its plans for its most ambitious exploration missions, cancel collaborations with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the 2016 Mars Trace Gas Orbiter and the 2018 ExoMars rover, slash the Mars Exploration Program, cancel the Lunar Quest Program, delay the very successful Discovery and New Frontiers competitive programs, and force cuts in mission operations and data analysis for several current missions, reducing the science return on an investment already made by the taxpayers.

Implementation of the balanced, consensus, budget-conservative plan outlined in the Decadal Survey will not be possible under the President’s proposal. Reductions of this magnitude focused narrowly on planetary science indicate that NASA is stepping away from one of its most popular and successful programs. This is a program that rewrites the textbooks and cements American leadership in space science. This is a program that trains young Americans in science and engineering and enables America to dominate space science. This is a program that thrills and engages the public with a stream of pictures and discoveries from incredible new worlds. This program provides excellent value to America.

The Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society, the world’s largest professional association of planetary scientists, urges Congress to support and fund a vigorous planetary science program as recommended by the National Research Council. We strongly believe that the robotic exploration of the solar system resonates with the American people; it is something that NASA needs to be doing and doing exceptionally well, and it is something the American people will support even in tight budget times.

[Image: DPS/AAS]

NASA faces a loss of confidence in its international space-exploration leadership after the unilateral U.S. withdrawal from a series of joint robotic missions to Mars with the European Space Agency.

Instead of working with ESA’s ExoMars program on sample-return precursor missions in 2016 and 2018, NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) will join forces with the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) directorate and the Office of the Chief Technologist to work up a medium-sized mission in 2018 that may meet the needs of all three NASA units.

In the Obama administrations’ fiscal 2013 NASA budget request, the Mars exploration portion of the SMD budget would be cut by $226.2 million, down from $587 million in the current fiscal year.  Most of the remaining $360.8 million will go for the nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) now en route to the red planet, and the upcoming Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (MAVEN) orbiter scheduled for a launch in 2013 to study its upper atmosphere.

The Mars cut has upset space scientists and their managers on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is sure to be the main topic when NASA officials face their advisory Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group in Washington next week. It will also be an issue when NASA defends its request in Congress.

“Members of the community go to their congress people and say, ‘this doesn’t make any sense; why are we being punished when we were so successful?’” says Scott Hubbard, who served as the agency’s first Mars Program Director.

Administrator Charles Bolden has raised the possibility of a European role in that new Mars mission, which will be better defined by mid-summer. But European space leaders he spoke to last week are lukewarm to the idea. For some ESA members, a lack of enthusiasm for partnerships with NASA is moving beyond robotic Mars missions to the complex set of barter deals that make up the international human spaceflight endeavor.

Two of Europe’s biggest International Space Station contributors have rejected a NASA proposal that would see ESA pay its share of station operating costs by building a propulsion module for NASA’s Orion crew transport capsule (AW&ST Jan. 9, p. 42). They say the proposal is technologically lackluster and unlikely to generate much public support. At the same time, ESA’s leadership is advancing a proposal to substitute Russia for NASA in the ExoMars work.

After NASA abruptly pulled out of talks in December that held the promise of a three-pronged approach to the Mars campaign, ESA and Russia pressed on with a bilateral solution. Rolf de Groot, head of ESA’s Robotic Exploration Coordination Office, says a bilateral technical-feasibility report was delivered Feb. 7 to ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin. The study assumes Russia will pick up most of NASA’s planned contributions to ExoMars, but also could require ESA to seek funding on top of the program’s current €1 billion ($1.3 billion) price tag.

Johann-Dietrich Woerner, head of German aerospace center DLR, says the situation with ExoMars, which started out as a single-launch technology demo valued at €650 million, “is quite embarrassing.” In an interview, he said it is difficult to believe a bilateral ExoMars campaign with Russia could be substantially less expensive than the joint ESA-NASA mission.

“We will not accept higher contributions on our part,” he asserts.

ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina says the agency’s heads of delegation met Feb. 15 to discuss the ExoMars situation but that no decisions will be taken until the ESA council meets in March.

“We are pushing hard to do ExoMars the way it was supposed to be done,” Bonacina says, adding that while Russian participation in ExoMars could bring science instruments and launchers to the program, Roscosmos would be unable to provide a landing system for the rover campaign in 2018.

“Tough choices had to be made,” Bolden says of NASA’s $17.7 billion budget request, which includes funds to finish and launch the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), continue development of the heavy-lift Space Launch System and Orion multipurpose crew vehicle, and maintain the already delayed schedule for seeding a commercial space transportation industry to low Earth orbit.

Science and human exploration have many of the same goals at Mars, says John Grunsfeld, NASA’s new associate administrator for science, suggesting that robotic and human geologists and astrobiologists would be seeking the same evidence for possible life and habitability at the planet. And William Gerstenmaier, the HEO associate administrator, notes that MSL is gathering radiation data now on its way to Mars that will aid in the design of future human spacecraft, and it will collect more data on atmospheric entry with its large heat shield when it arrives on the night of Aug. 5-6.

But Gerstenmaier also oversees the ISS, and the international arrangements that govern its operations are starting to fray. ESA is slated to hash out a new multiyear budget in November, when its 19 member governments are expected to debate continued participation in the ISS—­and how to pay for it—beyond 2015. Ultimately, European governments could decide to end their participation in the station in 2015 if NASA and ESA are unable to agree on a barter arrangement.

For now, participating ESA member governments are covering their share of space station utilities and other operating expenses with routine supply runs of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). However, with only three ATV missions remaining, ESA members are weighing a follow-on barter arrangement with NASA to cover about €450 million ($600 million) in station utilities costs anticipated in 2017-20.

Enrico Saggese, head of Italian space agency ASI, says Italy remains committed to the space station and expects to invest a total of €1.52 billion in the program through 2020. But, while NASA has expressed a preference for the Orion service-module barter element—a plan that would incorporate Italian-made ATV technology into the multipurpose crew vehicle—he argues that Europe has moved beyond such capabilities. For ESA, he says, the proposal would amount to “a negative application” of the agency’s technological prowess.

“The role for Europe would be too low,” says Saggese, who plans to discuss the barter arrangement and other cooperative projects with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden next month on the sidelines of the Satellite 2012 conference in Washington.

Yannick d’Escatha, head of French space agency CNES, also says Europe’s ISS barter element should engage a more innovative technology development in an effort to raise ESA’s technological profile and garner more public backing for European space programs. Specifically, d’Escatha says France would like to develop a vehicle capable of collecting orbital debris that could also have sample-return applications for exploration missions.

“We are not interested in the service module,” d’Escatha said in January.

NASA—and possibly ESA—will work over the next few months to devise a New Frontiers-class Mars mission, with total cost capped at $700 million, for the 2018 window. Meanwhile, the agency’s astrophysics community is reassured that the JWST will finally start on its way to the Earth-Sun L-2 Lagrangian point in 2018.

Bill Ochs, the project manager brought in after an independent panel found a $1.4 billion shortfall in completing the 6.5-meter (21.3-ft.) infrared space telescope, says development of the extremely complex observatory remains on target to stay within its $8 billion total cost cap. So far, the new system of monthly milestones tracked by NASA headquarters is working well, he says.

Aside from the change in the Mars program, and the $627.6 million request for the JWST—up from $518.6 million this year—most of the NASA budget is fairly flat compared to the funds actually received in 2012, according to Beth Robinson, NASA’s chief financial officer. But compared to earlier out-year projections, it is off by about $700 million, she says.

Because NASA is “protecting the civil service workforce,” job losses resulting from that cut will be felt among contractor personnel and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is run by the California Institute of Technology. Contractor job cuts are already well understood, according to Robinson, but the impact of changes in the Mars work at JPL remains to be seen. Overall, some 300-400 jobs that will be lost as development on MSL winds down may not be preserved with new work, Robinson says.

[Image: ESA]

As the 50th anniversary of his historic spaceflight approaches, former NASA astronaut John Glenn is pushing for manned exploration of Mars and other farflung destinations.

The U.S.-Soviet space race in the 1960s got much of the American public excited about space science and exploration. That enthusiasm has since flagged, but sending astronauts to the Red Planet could help rekindle it, Glenn said.

Going to Mars — and beyond?

NASA put astronauts on the moon in July 1969, just seven years after Glenn's orbital journey. While our species hasn't been beyond low-Earth orbit since NASA's last manned moon mission in 1972, Glenn still envisions an ambitious future for human spaceflight.

"I think we'll do more exploration, whether it's asteroid, Mars or wherever," Glenn said. "I think it'll go on beyond Mars sometime — probably not in our lifetime, but sometime."

Also taking part in today's event was Scott Carpenter, like Glenn a member of the Mercury Seven, the first class of astronauts NASA picked back in 1959. Glenn and Carpenter are the last two surviving members of this pioneering group, which includes Alan Shepard, who became the first American in space in May 1961.

Carpenter, who made the nation's second manned orbital spaceflight in May 1962, echoed some of Glenn's sentiments. When asked what he saw as the future of human spaceflight — where we should head next — Carpenter said simply, "Mars."

Mastering low-Earth orbit

Glenn doesn't think we should abandon near-Earth space on a mad rush for Mars. Quite the contrary; he believes humanity needs more experience in low-Earth orbit before undertaking journeys to the Red Planet and other distant destinations.

The $100 billion International Space Station can help us gain that experience, Glenn said, urging the U.S. and other nations to take full advantage of the research potential provided by the orbiting lab.

"That's what fleshes out the exploration as we go on," Glenn said.

Since NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in July 2011, the U.S. has been dependent on Russian Soyuz spaceships to transport its astronauts to and from the station. NASA is encouraging private American spaceflight firms to take over this taxi service, but this won't happen until 2017 at the earliest.

Glenn, a former Democratic senator from Ohio, deplored the decision to ground the shuttle, which was made in 2004 by President George W. Bush's administration.

"I think it's too bad," he said. "I just hope that some of the efforts now to recreate our own transportation system — I hope those come through and don't have a lot of problems, so that they can be man-rated and used."

Regardless of how astronauts reach low-Earth orbit, humanity's activities up there should extend beyond physiological studies that investigate the long-term effects of microgravity and radiation exposure on the human body, Glenn added.

"We haven't done everything we should be doing in low-Earth orbit, as far as I'm concerned," Glenn said. "I think your best way to Mars is assembling the vehicle in low-Earth orbit, and then eventually going out of low-Earth orbit from that."

The U.S. currently has plans to get to humans to Mars. In 2010, President Barack Obama directed NASA to work toward sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, then on to Mars by the mid-2030s.

Overall, astrophysics, Earth science, and Heliophysics (Sun studies) did OK. Again, some individual missions got increases and some decreases, but in general the budgets are stable. Funding for commercial spaceflight got a massive increase, more than doubling last year's $400M budget. I'm all for that, as of course is the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. I've been vocal about that, and I think handing off launch and other capabilities to commercial ventures is a good way for NASA to save money in the long run.

Some cuts didn't make sense to me. Education, for example, drops from $136M to $100M. Why? That money funds a vast amount of educational outreach - and I should know; I was funded by this for several years when I was at Sonoma State University creating educational materials for various NASA satellites. That funding does a huge amount of good for schoolkids, and cutting it is a mistake.

And it gets worse. A lot worse.

The Bad News for Mars

However, planetary exploration has gotten creamed. Its budget overall drops from $1.5 billion to $1.2, a very deep cut that doesn't just threaten but destroys near-future Mars exploration as well as future big grand missions to the outer planets in the tradition of Voyager, Cassini, and others.

There's no easy way to say this: these cuts are devastating. The President's request for just Mars exploration is $361 million, a crippling $226M drop in funding over the FY12 estimate, a 38.5% cut.

Read that again: a 38.5% cut. This will effectively halt the new exploration of Mars. It means pulling out of planning the ExoMars mission with the European Space Agency - effectively cancelling the mission, which will not make the Europeans happy - and also halting planning on a 2016 mission. There is still funding for the MAVEN mission scheduled for launch next year, but at reduced levels.

In my opinion, part of this is the fault of NASA: Curiosity, the rover on its way to Mars right now, was well over budget. Even after all these years, NASA still has a hard time getting budgets right, which is frustrating. However, this particular cut in the budget is madness. It was fought mightily by NASA, but the Office of Management and Budget apparently ignored all the advice from scientists and managers at NASA, cutting the program anyway. Ed Weiler, who was the head of the NASA Science Mission directorate, quit in protest over these cuts. I've had my disagreements with Ed on budget specifics over the years, but he has been a big defender of NASA from government cuts. For him to quit over this is a pretty strong indicator of how bad it is. Read that link to get all the details; but it's not a happy story.

Bill Nye, speaking on behalf of The Planetary Society, says it best:

The priorities reflected in this budget would take us down the wrong path. Science is the part of NASA that's actually conducting interesting and scientifically important missions. Spacecraft sent to Mars, Saturn, Mercury, the Moon, comets, and asteroids have been making incredible discoveries, with more to come from recent launches to Jupiter, the Moon, and Mars. The country needs more of these robotic space exploration missions, not less.

He's right. The US has had an incredibly strong Mars program which has returned amazing science, as well as garnered enthusiastic public support. No other country has been able to do as well getting to Mars as we have. Of all the pieces of NASA to cut, this should be the very last one to see a reduction! It's maddening, bizarre, and simply dumb.

What cost JWST and Curiosity?

NASA chief Charles Bolden tried to spin all this positively, but I have a hard time seeing it that way. And it's hard to see how James Webb Space Telescope did not have an impact here. JWST is getting a large $109M (21%) increase as it gets nearer to completion. My thoughts on this are on record, for example here, here, and here. Basically, this mission on its own is taking the lion's share a big chunk of NASA's science funding, and if NASA's overall budget remains stable JWST must perforce siphon money from other missions. Administrator Bolden wouldn't specify what part of the budget would get cut to accommodate JWST, but given the massive slashing of Mars funding, well. That seems clear enough. [Update: It has been pointed out to me that the increase in JWST's budget is smaller than what was taken from Mars. True, but as I pointed out last year, an additional $500+ million was recently given to JWST. I was considering that as well when I wrote the above paragraph.]

At some level the Mars rover Curiosity, currently on its way to Mars, must have played a role here too. It was also overbudget, though by a smaller total amount than JWST. But its impact has been significant.

I'll note that I think JWST is far enough along to make sure it gets finished and launched, but the funding for it should be added to NASA's budget, not subtracted from other places. I'm not happy with the way JWST was handled (the amount it's over budget is staggering to say the least) and NASA really needs to gets its head in the game when it comes to figuring this stuff out.

But the thing is, we shouldn't even have to make these choices. We shouldn't have to choose between one ground-breaking scientific mission and another. The reason we do is because NASA's budget is so small in the first place. It really speaks volumes about where science and explorations stand as an American value.

The Next Step

Mind you, this budget is not set in stone. This is simply the President's request, which then goes to Congress. Over the past few years, Obama's request has been for increases, with Congress threatening to cut it. Now, however, this budget comes pre-cut to Congress. The news isn't all bad, though: some members of Congress have said this budget is not satisfactory (like Adam Schiff (D-Pasadena), whose district includes JPL), and will fight to make it better. The Planetary Society will be rallying its members to talk to their Congress critters and increase NASA's slice for science from 27.5% to a solid 30%, enough to re-fund Mars exploration.

My opinion hasn't really changed in years. NASA is a tiny, tiny part of the federal budget, far less than 1%. There are other places where money can be found, other places where cuts make more sense.

I've made this analogy before: if you have a hard drive full of 4 Gb movie files, you don't make room by deleting 100kB text files! You go after the big targets, which is far more efficient. Reducing NASA's budget for Mars exploration frees up 0.01% of the federal budget. That's it. One ten-thousandth of what we spend overall, a hundredth of a penny for every dollar.

What does that mean in more understandable terms? Over the past few years, the rate of money spent in Afghanistan and Iraq is about 20 million dollars per hour. In other words, the amount of money being cut from Mars exploration is equal to what we were spending on the War on Terror in just 15 hours.

You might want to read that again. For the cost of less than a single day on the War on Terror, we could have a robust and far-reaching program to explore Mars, look for signs of life on another planet, increase our overall science knowledge, and inspire a future generation of kids.

Our priorities on national spending could use some major overhauling. Science is the future. Our economy depends on many things, but science, engineering, and technology represent a huge portion of its support.

It's simple: cutting back on science is cutting our future's throat. And this budget is reaching for the knife.

So I'm reaching for my keyboard. I'll be contacting my Senators and Representative. If you're an American citizen, I suggest you do the same.

[Images: NASA]

KOUROU, French Guiana — European government officials on Feb. 13 said they would attempt to push ahead with their ExoMars missions to Mars in NASA’s absence by reinforcing their cooperation with Russia.

With NASA’s fiscal-year 2013 budget now saying formally what had been whispered for weeks — the U.S. agency is pulling out entirely of a planned 2016 mission and cannot commit to the follow-on 2018 mission — the European Space Agency finds itself between a rock and a hard place.

But moving forward likely will mean ESA needs to find extra money for a project that has been unable to complete its funding despite more than three years of effort. ESA has rounded up 850 million euros ($1.1 billion) in support for ExoMars, led by Italy. The mission, as designed with NASA’s involvement, was estimated to cost ESA 1 billion euros.

ExoMars has had funding difficulties in Europe since it was first proposed nearly a decade ago. Those problems were not solved by NASA’s participation, and they remain serious enough to cast doubt on ExoMars even if Russia steps in as a major partner.

The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, has indicated it would be willing to fill at least part of the role that ESA until recently assumed would be NASA’s. Pending final negotiations between ESA and Roscosmos, two Russian Proton vehicles could be ready for the 2016 and 2018 launches, replacing two NASA-provided Atlas rockets.

But what Russia cannot provide in NASA’s place is a Mars landing system for an ESA-built rover planned for the 2018 launch. Under the scenario with NASA, the U.S. and European agencies would divide work on a rover and use NASA’s Sky Crane landing system.

“Russia can replace just about everything NASA was going to provide for ExoMars except the lander,” Dordain said in an interview here following the successful inaugural flight of ESA’s Vega small-satellite launcher. “That is something we would have to develop, so already I know that ExoMars without NASA is going to cost us more than with NASA. How much more remains to be seen.”

NASA officials have told their European counterparts that while the fiscal-year 2013 budget proposal released Feb. 13 ends all hope of a NASA role in a 2016 launch, there remains some possibility of NASA involvement in the 2018 mission.

What kind of role NASA might play, and when that might be decided, remains unclear. “I will always welcome NASA into ExoMars,” Dordain said. “But what I cannot do now is let NASA’s decision-making process determine our development schedule.”

The Italian Space Agency (ASI) has led ExoMars development from the start. Italy’s government debt crisis complicates any ASI attempt to increase its funding, but ASI President Enrico Saggese said his agency's backing for the project remains as solid as ever.

The U.S. government’s treatment of ExoMars in the fiscal-year 2013 budget highlights the fact that “cooperation with NASA is at a low ebb,” Saggese said in an interview here. “If I have correctly understood the situation, cooperation with Europe is taking a major portion of the budget cut.”

Saggese, whose agency has been among the most steadfast partners of NASA in Europe, both on scientific satellites and on the international space station, said he wondered whether NASA would be so quick to abandon ExoMars if Europe had already demonstrated its capability to land on another planet.

“In ExoMars, we were asking NASA to cooperate in an area that NASA has already mastered,” Saggese said, referring to NASA’s previous successes in landing rovers on Mars. “You don’t ask a champion bridge player to sit down and play with someone just learning to shuffle cards. We need to go to Mars and we need to maintain the 2016 and 2018 dates.”

Saggese said talks between Europe and Russia on Mars exploration might be widened to include a lunar lander, which Germany wants to build, combined with an ExoMars mission and a follow-on to Russia’s failed Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, which was designed to return samples from Mars’ larger moon, Phobos.

Dordain said ESA would deliver to its member governments, in mid-March, an estimate of the cost of ExoMars without NASA but including a European-built lander. ExoMars was also designed to include an entry, descent and landing module on the 2016 flight, whose main payload would be a European-built Mars telecommunications orbiter.

March is also the month when ESA’s current ExoMars development contract with Thales Alenia Space ends, and must be extended or canceled.

[Images: ESA, Roscosmos]

Dear Sister Mary Jucunda:

Your letter was one of many which are reaching me every day, but it has touched me more deeply than all the others because it came so much from the depths of a searching mind and a compassionate heart. I will try to answer your question as best as I possibly can.

First, however, I would like to express my great admiration for you, and for all your many brave sisters, because you are dedicating your lives to the noblest cause of man: help for his fellowmen who are in need.

You asked in your letter how I could suggest the expenditures of billions of dollars for a voyage to Mars, at a time when many children on this Earth are starving to death. I know that you do not expect an answer such as “Oh, I did not know that there are children dying from hunger, but from now on I will desist from any kind of space research until mankind has solved that problem!” In fact, I have known of famined children long before I knew that a voyage to the planet Mars is technically feasible. However, I believe, like many of my friends, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding tangible results.

Before trying to describe in more detail how our space program is contributing to the solution of our Earthly problems, I would like to relate briefly a supposedly true story, which may help support the argument. About 400 years ago, there lived a count in a small town in Germany. He was one of the benign counts, and he gave a large part of his income to the poor in his town. This was much appreciated, because poverty was abundant during medieval times, and there were epidemics of the plague which ravaged the country frequently. One day, the count met a strange man. He had a workbench and little laboratory in his house, and he labored hard during the daytime so that he could afford a few hours every evening to work in his laboratory. He ground small lenses from pieces of glass; he mounted the lenses in tubes, and he used these gadgets to look at very small objects.  The count was particularly fascinated by the tiny creatures that could be observed with the strong magnification, and which he had never seen before.  He invited the man to move with his laboratory to the castle, to become a member of the count's household, and to devote henceforth all his time to the development and perfection of his optical gadgets as a special employee of the count.

The townspeople, however, became angry when they realized that the count was wasting his money, as they thought, on a stunt without purpose. “We are suffering from this plague,” they said, “while he is paying that man for a useless hobby!” But the count remained firm. “I give you as much as I can afford,” he said, “but I will also support this man and his work, because I know that someday something will come out of it!”

Indeed, something very good came out of this work, and also out of similar work done by others at other places: the microscope. It is well known that the microscope has contributed more than any other invention to the progress of medicine, and that the elimination of the plague and many other contagious diseases from most parts of the world is largely a result of studies which the microscope made possible.

The count, by retaining some of his spending money for research and discovery, contributed far more to the relief of human suffering than he could have contributed by giving all he could possibly spare to his plague-ridden community.

The situation which we are facing today is similar in many respects. The President of the United States is spending about 200 billion dollars in his yearly budget [more than $2 trillion in 2012]. This money goes to health, education, welfare, urban renewal, highways, transportation, foreign aid, defense, conservation, science, agriculture and many installations inside and outside the country. About 1.6 percent of this national budget was allocated to space exploration this year [less than .5 of one percent in 2012]. The space program includes Project Apollo, and many other smaller projects in space physics, space astronomy, space biology, planetary projects, Earth resources projects, and space engineering. To make this expenditure for the space program possible, the average American taxpayer with 10,000 dollars income per year is paying about 30 tax dollars for space. The rest of his income, 9,970 dollars, remains for his subsistence, his recreation, his savings, his other taxes, and all his other expenditures.

You will probably ask now: “Why don’t you take 5 or 3 or 1 dollar out of the 30 space dollars which the average American taxpayer is paying, and send these dollars to the hungry children?” To answer this question, I have to explain briefly how the economy of this country works. The situation is very similar in other countries. The government consists of a number of departments (Interior, Justice, Health, Education and Welfare, Transportation, Defense, and others) and the bureaus (National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and others). All of them prepare their yearly budgets according to their assigned missions, and each of them must defend its budget against extremely severe screening by congressional committees, and against heavy pressure for economy from the Bureau of the Budget and the President. When the funds are finally appropriated by Congress, they can be spent only for the line items specified and approved in the budget.

The budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, naturally, can contain only items directly related to aeronautics and space. If this budget were not approved by Congress, the funds proposed for it would not be available for something else; they would simply not be levied from the taxpayer, unless one of the other budgets had obtained approval for a specific increase which would then absorb the funds not spent for space. You realize from this brief discourse that support for hungry children, or rather a support in addition to what the United States is already contributing to this very worthy cause in the form of foreign aid, can be obtained only if the appropriate department submits a budget line item for this purpose, and if this line item is then approved by Congress.

You may ask now whether I personally would be in favor of such a move by our government. My answer is an emphatic yes. Indeed, I would not mind at all if my annual taxes were increased by a number of dollars for the purpose of feeding hungry children, wherever they may live.

I know that all of my friends feel the same way. However, we could not bring such a program to life merely by desisting from making plans for voyages to Mars. On the contrary, I even believe that by working for the space program I can make some contribution to the relief and eventual solution of such grave problems as poverty and hunger on Earth. Basic to the hunger problem are two functions: the production of food and the distribution of food. Food production by agriculture, cattle ranching, ocean fishing and other large-scale operations is efficient in some parts of the world, but drastically deficient in many others. For example, large areas of land could be utilized far better if efficient methods of watershed control, fertilizer use, weather forecasting, fertility assessment, plantation programming, field selection, planting habits, timing of cultivation, crop survey and harvest planning were applied.

The best tool for the improvement of all these functions, undoubtedly, is the artificial Earth satellite. Circling the globe at a high altitude, it can screen wide areas of land within a short time; it can observe and measure a large variety of factors indicating the status and condition of crops, soil, droughts, rainfall, snow cover, etc., and it can radio this information to ground stations for appropriate use. It has been estimated that even a modest system of Earth satellites equipped with Earth resources, sensors, working within a program for worldwide agricultural improvements, will increase the yearly crops by an equivalent of many billions of dollars.

The distribution of the food to the needy is a completely different problem. The question is not so much one of shipping volume, it is one of international cooperation. The ruler of a small nation may feel very uneasy about the prospect of having large quantities of food shipped into his country by a large nation, simply because he fears that along with the food there may also be an import of influence and foreign power. Efficient relief from hunger, I am afraid, will not come before the boundaries between nations have become less divisive than they are today. I do not believe that space flight will accomplish this miracle over night. However, the space program is certainly among the most promising and powerful agents working in this direction.

Let me only remind you of the recent near-tragedy of Apollo 13. When the time of the crucial reentry of the astronauts approached, the Soviet Union discontinued all Russian radio transmissions in the frequency bands used by the Apollo Project in order to avoid any possible interference, and Russian ships stationed themselves in the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans in case an emergency rescue would become necessary. Had the astronaut capsule touched down near a Russian ship, the Russians would undoubtedly have expended as much care and effort in their rescue as if Russian cosmonauts had returned from a space trip. If Russian space travelers should ever be in a similar emergency situation, Americans would do the same without any doubt.

Higher food production through survey and assessment from orbit, and better food distribution through improved international relations, are only two examples of how profoundly the space program will impact life on Earth. I would like to quote two other examples: stimulation of technological development, and generation of scientific knowledge.

The requirements for high precision and for extreme reliability which must be imposed upon the components of a moon-travelling spacecraft are entirely unprecedented in the history of engineering. The development of systems which meet these severe requirements has provided us a unique opportunity to find new material and methods, to invent better technical systems, to manufacturing procedures, to lengthen the lifetimes of instruments, and even to discover new laws of nature.

All this newly acquired technical knowledge is also available for application to Earth-bound technologies. Every year, about a thousand technical innovations generated in the space program find their ways into our Earthly technology where they lead to better kitchen appliances and farm equipment, better sewing machines and radios, better ships and airplanes, better weather forecasting and storm warning, better communications, better medical instruments, better utensils and tools for everyday life. Presumably, you will ask now why we must develop first a life support system for our moon-travelling astronauts, before we can build a remote-reading sensor system for heart patients. The answer is simple: significant progress in the solutions of technical problems is frequently made not by a direct approach, but by first setting a goal of high challenge which offers a strong motivation for innovative work, which fires the imagination and spurs men to expend their best efforts, and which acts as a catalyst by including chains of other reactions.

Spaceflight without any doubt is playing exactly this role. The voyage to Mars will certainly not be a direct source of food for the hungry. However, it will lead to so many new technologies and capabilities that the spin-offs from this project alone will be worth many times the cost of its implementation.

Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment.

We need more young men and women who choose science as a career and we need better support for those scientists who have the talent and the determination to engage in fruitful research work. Challenging research objectives must be available, and sufficient support for research projects must be provided. Again, the space program with its wonderful opportunities to engage in truly magnificent research studies of moons and planets, of physics and astronomy, of biology and medicine is an almost ideal catalyst which induces the reaction between the motivation for scientific work, opportunities to observe exciting phenomena of nature, and material support needed to carry out the research effort.

Among all the activities which are directed, controlled, and funded by the American government, the space program is certainly the most visible and probably the most debated activity, although it consumes only 1.6 percent of the total national budget, and 3 per mille (less than one-third of 1 percent) of the gross national product. As a stimulant and catalyst for the development of new technologies, and for research in the basic sciences, it is unparalleled by any other activity. In this respect, we may even say that the space program is taking over a function which for three or four thousand years has been the sad prerogative of wars.

How much human suffering can be avoided if nations, instead of competing with their bomb-dropping fleets of airplanes and rockets, compete with their moon-travelling space ships! This competition is full of promise for brilliant victories, but it leaves no room for the bitter fate of the vanquished, which breeds nothing but revenge and new wars.

Although our space program seems to lead us away from our Earth and out toward the moon, the sun, the planets, and the stars, I believe that none of these celestial objects will find as much attention and study by space scientists as our Earth. It will become a better Earth, not only because of all the new technological and scientific knowledge which we will apply to the betterment of life, but also because we are developing a far deeper appreciation of our Earth, of life, and of man.

The photograph which I enclose with this letter shows a view of our Earth as seen from Apollo 8 when it orbited the moon at Christmas, 1968. Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance. Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder and louder warning of the grave problems that confront man in our times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production, water control, overpopulation. It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet.

Very fortunately though, the space age not only holds out a mirror in which we can see ourselves, it also provides us with the technologies, the challenge, the motivation, and even with the optimism to attack these tasks with confidence. What we learn in our space program, I believe, is fully supporting what Albert Schweitzer had in mind when he said: “I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope.”

My very best wishes will always be with you, and with your children.

Very sincerely yours,

Ernst Stuhlinger

Associate Director for Science

[Image: NASA]

Next week, President Barack Obama will propose a $300 million cut in NASA's planetary science programs as part of his 2013 request for the agency, ScienceInsider has learned. If adopted by Congress, the 20% cut in planetary science would in all likelihood shelve NASA's ability to participate in two Mars missions to be carried out in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA). And the former head of NASA's science mission says that the targeting of the ExoMars program by White House budget officials was the final straw leading to his resignation last fall.

"The Mars program is one of the crown jewels of NASA," says Ed Weiler. "In what irrational, Homer Simpson world would we single it out for disproportionate cuts?"

Weiler's resignation in September caught the space science community by surprise. But he says it was the culmination of a soul-sapping and ultimately unsuccessful battle with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on how to accommodate the rising cost of the James Webb Space Telescope within an overall agency budget being squeezed by efforts to reduce federal spending and shrink the deficit. "It all left a very bad taste," Weiler told ScienceInsider this morning from his house in Vero Beach, Florida.

The American space agency looks set to pull the plug on its joint missions to Mars with the European Space Agency.

Nasa has told Esa it is now highly unlikely it will be able to contribute to the endeavours, which envision an orbiting satellite and a big roving robot being sent to the Red Planet.

The US has yet to make a formal statement on the matter but budget woes are thought to lie behind its decision.

A public announcement by Nasa of its withdrawal from the ExoMars programme, as it is known in Europe, will probably come once President Obama's 2013 Federal Budget Request is submitted.

This request, expected in the coming days, will give the US space agency a much clearer view of how much money it has to implement its various projects.

"The Americans have indicated that the possibility of them participating is now low - very low. It's highly unlikely," said Alvaro Gimenez, Esa's director of science.

"They are interested, they know it's a very good option for them - but they have difficulties putting these missions in the budget," he told BBC News.

"We have to wait for the Americans to have a definitive say, but we also have to study alternatives."

The pull-out by Nasa - if that is confirmed - will be just the latest twist in what has been a long running saga, and it will leave Europe's Mars ambitions in a precarious position.

As currently planned, ExoMars would see an orbiting satellite launched in 2016 to "sniff" for methane and other trace gases in the Martian atmosphere, followed by an autonomous rover in 2018 to drill beneath the planet's surface.

The Americans were supposed to be providing instruments and a communications package for the orbiter, and a great swathe of equipment for the rover, in addition to the rocket to send it on its way and the descent system to get the robot safely down on to the Martian terrain.

Concerns last year in the US about the state of Nasa's Mars budget had already prompted Esa to inquire whether the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) would be interested in entering the ExoMars programme.

But the latest signals from Washington have now pushed Esa into discussing a full bi-lateral agreement, with the intention that Roscosmos pick up many of the responsibilities expected to be dropped by the Americans.

This would include instruments for the orbiter and the provision of two Proton rockets to get both missions to their destination.

It could not be a straight substitution of roles, however, because the Russians do not possess all of the skills that Nasa was proposing to bring to ExoMars.

For Europe, it means returning to an earlier, smaller design for the 2018 rover. It would also have to resurrect ideas it had for vented, or dead-beat, airbags to cushion the vehicle's touch-down.

But the technical challenges of having to reframe the ExoMars missions may pale in comparison to the difficulties of meeting the additional costs involved.

Changes in architecture would inevitably push the budget profile beyond the one billion euros that Esa member states had agreed should be the cap for ExoMars.

"I cannot pretend the situation is not grim," commented Dr David Parker, director of science, technology and exploration at the UK Space Agency (UKSA).

"It's come as a major surprise to us that the Americans don't want to play. We now have to take some cold, sensible decisions about what we do with public money, and it may be that some national activities will have to be put in the deep freeze until we have a clearer sense of what is going to happen."

ExoMars was formally initiated in Europe by ministers in 2005. Esa has already spent in the region of 200 million euros on technology development, and would be loath to give up on the flagship project.

"ExoMars is really important for Europe and its role in future exploration," said Dr Gimenez.

"It's important for science and it's important for industry. There are a host of reasons to continue with ExoMars and that is why I am working so hard to try to make it happen," he told BBC News.

A Nasa pull-out of ExoMars would be met with dismay by American planetary scientists.

The 2016 and 2018 missions were seen as the first steps in a series of missions that would lead to the eventual return of Martian rocks for study in Earth laboratories.

A recent panel reviewing the future of US planetary science considered this goal to be a top priority.

Withdrawal also has grave implications for transatlantic relations.

The US has already left Europe high and dry on several projects of late. Last year, it walked away from three multi-billion euro missions-in-the-planning, forcing European scientists and engineers to head back to the drawing board after three years of feasibility work.

Asked to comment on developments, Nasa HQ in Washington told the BBC: "Even in these times of fiscal restraint, President Obama has laid out an ambitious plan of exploration and discovery for Nasa that includes robotic missions to Mars as well as the ultimate goal of a human mission. It would not be appropriate to comment on specifics of the president's budget before it is released on 13 February."

[Image: ESA]

"We interpret these as sedimentary deposits, maybe ice-rich," says Dr Mouginot. "It is a strong new indication that there was once an ocean here."

"Throughout all of this depth, we see the evidence for sedimentary material and ice."

The sediments revealed by MARSIS are areas of low radar reflectivity. Such sediments are typically low-density granular materials that have been eroded away by water and carried to their final destination.

This later ocean would however have been temporary. Within a million years or less, Dr Mouginot estimates, the water would have either frozen back in place and been preserved underground again, or turned into vapour and lifted gradually into the atmosphere.

"I don't think it could have stayed as an ocean long enough for life to form."

In order to find evidence of life, astrobiologists will have to look even further back in Mars' history when liquid water existed for much longer periods.

Nevertheless, this work provides some of the best evidence yet that there were once large bodies of liquid water on Mars and is further proof of the role of liquid water in the martian geological history.

"Previous Mars Express results about water on Mars came from the study of images and mineralogical data, as well as atmospheric measurements. Now we have the view from the subsurface radar," says Olivier Witasse, ESA's Mars Express Project Scientist.

"This adds new pieces of information to the puzzle but the question remains: where did all the water go?"

If you've ever dreamed of becoming an astronaut and have four months to spare, you might have the "right stuff" to fly to Mars … well, sort of.

Scientists at Cornell University studying how best to feed Mars-bound astronauts during their long space trip to the Red Planet have dreamed up a mock mission to see how appetites and food preferences can change over time. The researchers are looking for six volunteers to live and work like astronauts for four months inside a faux space capsule in Hawaii.

While what's on the menu may not seem like one of the biggest scientific challenges facing a manned mission to Mars, it is actually more complicated than it looks.

"They not only tire of eating foods they normally enjoy, but also tend to eat less, which can put them at risk for nutritional deficiency, loss of bone and muscle mass, and reduced physical capabilities," according to a Cornell statement. [Space Food Photos: What Astronauts Eat]

The project, called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analogue & Simulation (HI-SEAS), will begin in early 2013 on Hawaii's big island. After a successful mission, the participants will be paid $5,000 plus travel and expenses. The deadline to apply is Feb. 29.

Mock mission to Mars

During the simulated mission, the volunteer "astronauts" will eat a mix of instant foods as well as meals they cook for themselves from shelf-stable ingredients. They will then rate all their meals, and fill out daily surveys about their mood state, personal health and body mass.

The researchers will track the volunteers' enjoyment of their food options, and any changes in their preferences over time. They will also measure how much time, power and water is required to prepare different meal options, and build up a database of recipes and cooking tips for the first humans to make the trip to the Red Planet for real.

"The major disadvantage of cooking on a space mission is the cost of resources required for food preparation and cleanup: equipment, power, water, and crew labor," according to the study's website. "Crew time spent on housekeeping, maintenance, and food related tasks is not available for the mission’s exploratory or scientific goals."

The mock astronauts will be able to communicate to the outside world only through time-delayed electronic means, and must gear up in simulated spacesuits whenever they leave their facility.

Hunter and her colleagues, Bruce Halpern of Cornell and Kim Binsted of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, hope to attract highly educated volunteers, such as scientists and engineers, "with the enticement of working on their own personal research projects while in Hawaii," according to a statement. Participants must have bachelor's degrees, plus some graduate school experience, in science or engineering.

Value of fake space missions

The upcoming Hawaii sojourn is not the first fake space mission to be conducted for research purposes.

In November 2011, six volunteers emerged after spending nearly a year and a half inside a mock Mars space capsule on the joint European/Russian Mars500 mission. The 520-day trial cost $15 million and marked the longest spaceflight simulation ever conducted. It was undertaken to study the physical and psychological ramifications of being confined to a small space with the same people for an extended time.

NASA also routinely sends astronauts down under the sea to conduct ocean voyages that double as simulated spaceflights. NASA's Extreme Environment Mission Operations, or NEEMO, project has sent 15 multi-day missions down to an underwater laboratory 60 feet (18 meters) below the Atlantic Ocean.

Space agencies around the world have also been known to send spaceflyers in training out to deserts, deep into caves, and into the frozen wasteland of Antarctica to prepare them for the challenges of actual spaceflight.

For details on how to apply to the Hawaii Space Exploration Analogue & Simulation, go here: http://manoa.hawaii.edu/hi-seas/.

[Image: ESA/Lightroom Photos]