On Earth, MER’s Principal Investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell, and Project Manager John Callas appeared before a Senior Review on May 2ndat the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to propose an eleventh mission extension that would keep Opportunity roving through 2019. Beginning in 2020, NASA is to shift to granting mission extensions every threeyears as opposed to every two years; hence, this extension would be for just one year.

“We presented. It was well received. And we’ll wait to hear what they say,” summed up Callas, who oversees the mission from JPL, the NASA center and birthplace of all the space agency’s Mars rovers. “We did put forward a compelling science case, but at the same time we told them that the budget is very difficult and that there are risks associated with the budget they are proposing for us,” Callas said. “I’m trying to identify where the risks are in the project and mitigate those given our situation. But the reality is, with a smaller budget, no matter what you do there are going to be risks.”

Opportunity and the MER operations team roved Mars comfortably for years on a frills-free $14 million annual budget. For the tenth mission extension (2017-2018), the budget was cut to a little less than $13 million. The maximum funding to be allotted for 2019 is further reduced to about $12 million, according to one source. While it may not seem like a lot – and in the grand financial scheme of planetary exploration it isn’t – there is almost no doubt that this budget cut will impact operations, primarily by shrinking the ops team.

Therefore, assuming the missionis granted this extension for 2019, MER’s greatest challenge will be ensuring the care and feeding of Opportunity continues with the same kind of attention and integrity that led to the mission becoming a legend in its own time.

The 2019 budget will likely mean that the MER ops team will also be forced to work fewer days in a given month and thus have less interaction with Opportunity. “That is the main nob that I can turn,” said Callas. “We still have to plan every sol for the rover. The question is how many times a week do we do that? Right now, we’re moving between three and five times a week depending on how Earth time and Mars time line up. But we may have to go to just three times a week.”

That could present problems. The equation is fairly simple. Fewer people = less expertise on the project = less scrutiny = potentially less discovery of challenges. With a crew of part-timers who are balancing MER work with other missions, there is the risk those individuals could lose focus or “situational awareness.” The bare bones budget also likely means mission ops loses continuity. “Those all introduce risks into the operations process,” Callas said.

The frustrating factor is that the amount of money in question, a couple million dollars, to keep this heralded mission – one of NASA’s most popular in all its 60 years – and this beloved little record-setting, textbook changing, pioneering golfcart-sized robot healthy and roving on, is really a drop in the bucket in terms of the entire Mars Program.

“There weren’t many comments and it ended early,” said Arvidson, who listened in to the presentation telephonically. “Hopefully that’s a good sign.”