White House Could Jeopardize Mars Missions By Slashing NASA’s Funding
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The White House scheme to reshape NASA by slashing its funding could jeopardize future human flights … More to Mars. Shown here is NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft – one of the three Mars orbiters set to be terminated under the president’s plan. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images) Getty Images With its radical reshaping of NASA’s future by decimating its funding, the White House is imperiling the upcoming human missions to Mars that it purports to back. In a new masterplan for NASA—with a proposed budget that slits in half appropriations for planetary science endeavors—the president still states he aims to advance precursor flights to astronauts landing on Mars. Yet the plan paradoxically terminates funding for three of the five orbiters circling the Red Planet that have been pivotal to landing robotic explorers on Mars, and would be crucial to a safe human expedition. The orbiting stations, equipped with cutting-edge cameras to image spacecraft as they descend onto the Martian dunes, and powerful radio antennas to speed communications between rover-scouts and mission planners back on Earth, collectively make up the Mars Relay Network. This constellation played a central role in the latest NASA expedition to Mars, during the arrival of the robotic cameraman Perseverance and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity, says Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA’s leading-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. The ring of spacecraft observing and mapping Mars, Gladden tells me in an interview, should actually be expanded to set the stage for American spacefarers to begin their first odysseys across the ancient volcanos and disappeared oceans of the mysterious orange-red orb. “In the next few years, there is talk by many institutions and companies of sending many vehicles to the surface of Mars,” in the lead-up to astronaut flights, he says. “Losing…
Filed under: News - @ June 28, 2025 9:12 pm