Sun, Feb 12, 2012
The Agency Slashed The Planetary Sciences Program, Effectively
Killing Joint Mars Mission With ESA
President Obama's proposed $300 million cut to the planetary
sciences program in the FY 2013 NASA budget was what pushed Ed
Weiler to resign from the agency last September, and that's the
word directly from the former Associate Administrator for the
Science Mission Directorate.
Ed Weiler Official NASA Photo
In Weiler's view, the 20% cut in the program would spell an end
to a planned joint mission to Mars with ESA, which he called one of
the "crown jewels" of the space agency. He told
ScienceInsider the cuts were
"irrational."
The planetary sciences program has been cut from its current
$1.5 billion to $1.2 billion in 2013, with a further reduction to
$1 billion scheduled for 2017. Weiler said he had proposed an
across-the-board cut of three percent to meet the budget
targets.
OMB, however, singled out the joint ExoMars mission to first
send a Trace Gas Orbiter to the planet in 2016, followed by
European and U.S. Rovers in 2018. Weiler said that, after five
successful Mars missions in a row, the cuts were "bizarre." He said
NASA administrator Charles Bolden had managed to preserve the
program in the 2010 budget, but the fight left him frustrated and
spent.
Now retired, Weiler says he spends a lot of time walking on the
beach near his Vero Beach, FL home. Though geographically not far
from the space center in Cocoa Beach, he says it's a "thousand
miles away from the irrationality zone."
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