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Topline NASA has cited federal budget concerns as the reason for pumping the brakes on its Mars Sample Return mission meant to bring pieces of the Red Planet back to Earth in 2033, but several lawmakers are calling the move “short-sighted” and have accused the agency of flying “in the face of Congressional authority” by moving to scale back. This concept illustration provided by NASA shows the Perseverance rover collecting rock and soil … [+] samples in sealed tubes on the planet’s surface. Getty Images Key Facts In a letter sent Tuesday, six senators and representatives from both sides of the aisle told NASA Administrator Bill Nelson they were “mystified” by the agency’s “rash decision” to preemptively cut down the program in anticipation of possible budget cuts down the line. The agency earlier this month blamed budget uncertainty—Congress has yet to approve a fiscal year 2024 federal budget and has narrowly missed several government shutdowns—for an order given to three field centers to “start ramping back on activities” related to the Mars retrieval mission, a project estimated to cost between $8 and $11 billion. NASA says the best course of action is to assume the project will not be funded and make adjustments for a “worst case scenario,” but Tuesday’s letter argues doing so will ensure the project wouldn’t stay on track with the current timeline to bring samples from Mars to Earth by the 2030s. If the project is shelved, lawmakers said “billions of dollars in contracts supporting American businesses will be subject to cancellation and hundreds of highly skilled jobs in California will be lost”—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Honeybee Robotics are among the companies working with NASA on the project. The letter, led by California Democrats Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Alex Padilla, emphasizes…

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Filed under: News - @ November 23, 2023 2:12 am