NASA will park only 1 Mars rover due to budget

NASA will park only 1 Mars rover due to budget

www.khaleejtimes.com< br />

LOS ANGELES - Scientists plan to put one of the twin Mars rovers to sleep and limit the activities of the other robot to fulfill a NASA order to cut $4 million (Ð2.59 million) from the program’s budget, mission team members said.

The news comes amid belt-tightening at NASA headquarters, which is under pressure to cover cost overruns of a flagship Mars mission to land a Hummer-sized rover on the Red Planet next year.

(visit the link for the full news article)


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[edit on 25-3-2008 by Enceladus]

This is one of the most valuable project done by Human beings and just to save $4 million from their annual budget they are gonna stop one of those rovers? Why can't they just stop the war in Iraq or Afghanistan for few hours and save some millions? What a shame.

www.khaleejtimes.com< br /> (visit the link for the full news article)

Budget Cuts Could Shut Down Mars Rover

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) folks that operate the Spirit and Opportunity robots on the red planet have gotten some bad news.

A directive has come from NASA Headquarters to take a 40 percent financial cut in their program — some $4 million in the remaining months of fiscal year 2008.

SPACE.com has also learned that the venerable NASA Mars orbiter, Odyssey, is on the cost-cutting table, too. Odyssey has been in orbit since 2001.

(added quote tags)

[edit on 31-3-2008 by Jbird]

According to this CNN article, they aren't shutting either of them down. This is far too important a mission to shut them down now. They've still got plenty of miles to go in them. It would be a detriment to science to shut them off. I'm glad that they aren't.

TheBorg

reply to post by TheBorg


Thanks for the update; I think they have sent those rovers to explore Mars for limited period and luckily it continue to serve us & that might be costing them a lot or out of their planned budget. But since its so important achievement, how could they stop one of those rovers just because of this reason? I hope they will take the right decision and continue to explore Mars.

At Last, Happy Ending

NASA: Mars Rovers Won't Be Cut