NASA Budget Squeeze

NASA has been given, by Congress, a mandate to explore the Solar System. It has also been given, by President Bush and preliminarily by Congress, a mandate to return humans to the Moon by about 2020 and to plan for the human exploration of Mars. The problem is that Congress is reluctant to pay for all that.

NASA has been carrying out a systematic Mars exploration program over a decade and more, building the basis for future manned missions. That goal was formally set by President Bush in 2004. Now, however, because of budget constraints, the future of that systematic approach may be in some doubt. A sample return mission would be expensive enough to threaten other planned missions; NASA likely won't have the money for all of them. Nor is Mars the only target. Many planetary scientists want new missions to the outer planets undertaken. If a major thrust of NASA policy is the search for life beyond Earth, the argument can be made we are at least as likely to find extant life on Europa or Titan as on Mars.

Congress needs to decide how much it will spend on space exploration over the next few years, and define what it wants to accomplish with that money. Such decisions no doubt will wait until the next president takes office, which means there will be a year or more of uncertainty at NASA.