Seeing red: Anger as Nasa announces plans to cut funding for missions to Mars

Funding cut comes two years after Barack Obama announced plans to put a man on Mars

Space agency said it had to make 'tough choices... and live within our means'

Nasa is to cut its exploration of Mars, it has been announced.



It is part of the space agency's plan to reduce its exploration of other planets. But Nasa's former science chief is calling the plan 'irrational'.

With limited money for science and an over-budget new space telescope, Nasa essentially had to make a choice in where it wanted to explore: the neighbouring planet or the far-off cosmos. Mars lost.

Edward Weiler, who until September was Nasa's associate administrator for science, said: 'To me, it's totally irrational and unjustified,'

'We are the only country on this planet that has the demonstrated ability to land on another planet, namely Mars. It is a national prestige issue.'

Mars viewed from the Hubble Space Telescope. Cuts could mean this is the closest we get to the red planet in the future

Two scientists who were briefed on the 2013 Nasa budget that will be released next week said the space agency is eliminating two proposed joint missions with Europeans to explore Mars in 2016 and 2018.

Nasa had agreed to pay $1.4billion for those missions. Some Mars missions will continue, but the fate of future flights is unclear, including the much-sought flight to return rocks from the red planet.

The two scientists said the cuts to the Mars missions are part of a proposed reduction of about $300million in Nasa's $1.5billion planetary science budget.

More than $200million in those cuts are in the Mars programme, they said. The current Mars budget is $581.7million.

Mr Weiler said he quit last year because he was tired of fighting to save Mars from the budget knife.

He said he fought successfully to keep major cuts from Mars in the current budget but has no firsthand knowledge of the 2013 budget proposal.

This image of the vast plains of the northern polar region of Mars was the first sent back from the Phoenix probe in 2008

President Obama's dream of sending astronauts to Mars may now never come true

Just last week Dr Tom Pike, who fronted a study ruled out the possibility of life on Mars, said: 'Future NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) missions that are planned for Mars will have to dig deeper to search for evidence of life, which may still be taking refuge underground.'

Those missions may now never go ahead.



Mars 'has got public appeal, it's got scientific blessings from the National Academy', Mr Weiler said in a phone interview from Florida.

'Why would you go after it? And it fulfils the president's space policy to encourage more foreign collaboration.'

Two years ago, President Barack Obama said his ultimate goal was to send astronauts to Mars.

Images from Nasa's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity beamed back last summer

Nasa spokesman David Weaver said that, just like the rest of the federal government, the space agency has to make 'tough choices ... and live within our means'.

To do so, Mr Weaver said in an email: 'NASA is reassessing its current Mars exploration initiatives to maximise what can be achieved.'

One of the big problems for Nasa's science budget is the replacement for the wildly successful Hubble Space Telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope, which would be about 100 times more powerful and would gaze farther into the universe than ever before, is now supposed to cost around $8billion. The original estimate was $3.5billion.

The other big part of Nasa science spending - Earth sciences - is not being cut, the two scientists said.

Part of history: Fuk Li, manager of the Mars Exploration Program hugs Barry Goldstein, while Ed Sedivy and Peter Smith celebrate the succesful Phoenix Mars Lander spacecraft's scheduled landing on the Martian Arctic on May 25, 2008



