Two members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that sets NASA funding — a Democrat and a Republican — blasted the agency’s proposal to take a deep cut in its planetary-science accounts, and to drop out of its joint robotic Mars exploration effort with the European Space Agency (ESA).
Setting up another contentious issue in the coming election-year fight over civil-space spending, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Culbertson (R-Texas) argued that the decision to cut planetary science by $309.1 million, drop billion-dollar “flagship” missions for the foreseeable future and restructure robotic Mars exploration to a single $700 million mission in 2018 or 2020 poses a threat to U.S. space leadership and trustworthiness as an international partner in space.
It's about time Congress call the Obama administration and NASA on this travesty. To read more, click here.