Final Spending Talks Loom Large for Mars Samples Project

NASA has long prioritized a complex project to retrieve rock and dirt samples from Mars, as it holds the potential to provide answers to the age-old question of whether life existed on the red planet. The Perseverance rover, developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is responsible for collecting these samples. However, there is currently a dispute among lawmakers regarding the feasibility of bringing these samples back to Earth for further study, given the tight budgetary constraints.

This disagreement is not divided along partisan lines, but rather regional ones. California lawmakers support the work being done on the Mars Sample Return program at the Pasadena complex, while Maryland and Virginia representatives advocate for the sprawling Goddard Space Flight Center and other supporters of the agency.

Moreover, the Mars mission is facing significant concerns about its viability, following an internal review conducted by NASA. This review revealed that the program would take longer and cost much more than initially anticipated.

In terms of funding, the GOP-controlled House has aligned with the Biden administration, proposing full funding for the Mars program. On the other hand, the Democratic-controlled Senate has sought to allocate funds to other projects instead.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Chair of the Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations, expressed her concerns about the mission’s budgetary constraints. She emphasized the need to prioritize funding in areas that would have the most significant impact, considering the uncertainties surrounding the scientific outcomes of the Mars mission.

NASA is taking precautionary measures by preparing for potential challenges. The recent announcement of significant layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, amounting to 8 percent of its workforce, aligns with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s directive to ready the agency for a $300 million fiscal 2024 Mars project appropriation proposed in the Senate’s Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill.

The fate of the Mars program hangs in the balance as appropriators deliberate on the final Commerce-Justice-Science bill. This legislation, due by March 8 under the current stopgap law, accounts for the majority of fiscal 2024 discretionary funding.

While the Senate aims to reduce the Mars program budget by 63 percent based on NASA’s assessment of higher-than-expected costs, the House has included the full $949.3 million requested by President Joe Biden in their bill.

Representative Judy Chu of California expressed concern over potential setbacks caused by budget cuts, emphasizing the importance of preserving the progress achieved in Mars exploration.

The mission

Congress has allocated $1.74 billion for the Mars program, which has been identified as NASA’s top priority for robotic exploration by planetary scientists. However, the task of retrieving the samples is extremely challenging. It involves the Perseverance rover delivering the materials to a “sample retrieval lander” that is the size of a garage and shaped like a bug. This lander is equipped with a rocket to propel the materials back into orbit. The collected samples would then be retrieved by a spacecraft orbiting Mars and brought back to Earth, with a target re-entry date set for 2033, assuming everything goes according to plan.

According to NASA spokesman Dewayne Washington, this program is one of the most intricate missions ever undertaken by the agency. It requires the first-ever launch from another planet and a rendezvous with a spacecraft orbiting Mars. In September, NASA’s independent review board released a report stating that the program’s ultimate cost would range between $8 billion and $11 billion, with a “near zero probability” of meeting interim launch deadlines.

Due to the current budget constraints, the agency is now assessing future options for the program. An internal evaluation is currently underway, and recommendations are expected to be presented by the end of March.

Regional fights

The Mars program and NASA in general have already encountered financial constraints. The fiscal 2024 Commerce-Justice-Science bill is expected to face reductions compared to the previous year’s version due to spending limits imposed by the debt limit suspension law. Both the Senate and House bills have allocated less funding than the fiscal 2023 enacted level of $84.2 billion, with the Senate bill at $83.5 billion and the House bill at $81.5 billion.

While the White House initially proposed a significant increase in NASA’s budget to $27.2 billion, the House bill only provides $25.4 billion, which is essentially the same as fiscal 2023. The Senate, prioritizing other funding needs, would further reduce NASA’s budget to $25 billion.

Given the limited funds available, lawmakers are advocating for directing the available resources towards projects in their respective states. Even before NASA released its review board’s findings, the Senate appropriators expressed concern in their report accompanying the fiscal 2024 bill that the agency’s focus on the Mars mission is causing delays in other important projects due to financial and staffing constraints.

Lawmakers from Maryland and Virginia support the Senate’s proposed budget cut as it would free up more funds for projects benefiting Goddard, based in Greenbelt, Maryland, which oversees the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

Senator Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee representing Maryland, along with other lawmakers from Maryland and Virginia, signed a letter on January 8 urging committee leaders to support the Senate’s proposed reduction.

Shaheen lacks impartiality as an observer. The University of New Hampshire’s Space Science Center, a prominent NASA research institution, is actively participating in the Artemis program, an initiative by the agency to send astronauts back to the moon. Additionally, the center is engaged in the study of heliophysics, which focuses on understanding how the sun influences its surroundings.

Following the passing of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein in September, California no longer has a representative on the Appropriations panel. However, the influential California delegation is determined to assert its influence. On February 1st, the state’s senators and a majority of its House delegation jointly penned a letter to Shalanda Young, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, expressing their concerns regarding the administration’s decision to prematurely implement budget cuts to the Mars program.

The signatories of the letter encompass a wide range of individuals, including GOP lawmakers like Mike Garcia and Ken Calvert, who are facing challenging electoral races. Additionally, three Democratic candidates competing for Feinstein’s former seat, namely Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam B. Schiff, have also signed the letter.

Garcia, a member of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee, criticized NASA for disregarding the wishes of lawmakers through their preemptive budget cuts.

“NASA has unilaterally chosen to assume the worst-case scenario based on the Senate’s budget allocation. Furthermore, they have made decisions to reprogram budgets and significantly reduce funding for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, rendering it unfeasible in the near future,” Garcia stated.

Senate preferences

Initially, Senate appropriators instructed NASA to terminate the program if it cannot meet the $5.3 billion target in their Commerce-Justice-Science bill. During the panel’s July markup, just over two months before her passing, Feinstein modified the original draft committee report to allow NASA the choice to scale down or revise the program rather than completely canceling it.

If NASA decides to end the Mars mission, Senate appropriators would allocate most of the funds to the agency’s primary priority, the Artemis mission.

In the event of the Mars project being canceled, $235 million of the budget would be redirected to Artemis, meeting the budget request from the White House. Shaheen emphasized that Artemis, which has the potential to send the first woman to the moon, is the top priority for Senate appropriators in terms of NASA projects.

The remaining funds from the Mars project would be split, with $30 million each going towards the Dragonfly mission to explore Saturn’s moon Titan and the Geospace Constellation Dynamics mission, which studies Earth’s upper atmosphere. The latter would be put on hold under Biden’s budget, with the funds being shifted to the Mars program.

The Senate bill would fully finance the administration’s Dragonfly request and provide an additional $35 million to continue the atmospheric study, as part of a broader effort to support NASA’s Heliophysics budget, which would receive more funding than requested by the White House.

Although both programs were mentioned in a letter from the Maryland and Virginia delegations, advocating for more funding for Dragonfly than what the Senate bill proposes, Goddard is involved in the Saturn mission alongside Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

While the Virginia and Maryland lawmakers support the Senate’s proposed cut to the Mars project, they oppose any reallocation of funds to Artemis, arguing that the money should be redistributed within NASA’s scientific programs.

Next steps

California lawmakers argued in their letter to Young that NASA should develop a reworked Mars program that is simpler and cheaper instead of scrapping it.

Chu said she thinks the program could continue with $650 million in the current fiscal year and again next year, in line with what was appropriated two years ago. A compromise along those lines, she said, would allow the program “to go forth, perhaps with less money, but would enable this project to be able to survive.”

Meanwhile, NASA needs to start briefing Congress on its plans to restructure the program, Garcia said, as appropriators prepare to cut deals on fiscal 2024 spending.

“The Senate, their concerns aren’t invalid,” he said. “But the mission priority is still there, so when things get harder, or things change, you don’t just give up on it.”

This article is republished from PhysORG under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.