White House Could Jeopardize Mars Missions By Slashing NASA's Funding

Forbes

10 hours ago

The White House scheme to reshape NASA by slashing its funding could jeopardize future human flights ... More to Mars. Shown here is NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft - one of the three Mars orbiters set to be terminated under the president's plan. (Photo)
With its radical reshaping of NASA's future by decimating its funding, the White House is imperiling the upcoming human missions to Mars that it purports to back.
In a new masterplan for NASA—with a proposed budget that slits in half appropriations for planetary science endeavors—the president still states he aims to advance precursor flights to astronauts landing on Mars.
Yet the plan paradoxically terminates funding for three of the five orbiters circling the Red Planet that have been pivotal to landing robotic explorers on Mars, and would be crucial to a safe human expedition.
The orbiting stations, equipped with cutting-edge cameras to image spacecraft as they descend onto the Martian dunes, and powerful radio antennas to speed communications between rover-scouts and mission planners back on Earth, collectively make up the Mars Relay Network.
This constellation played a central role in the latest NASA expedition to Mars, during the arrival of the robotic cameraman Perseverance and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity, says Roy Gladden, manager of the Mars Relay Network at NASA's leading-edge Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena.
The ring of spacecraft observing and mapping Mars, Gladden tells me in an interview, should actually be expanded to set the stage for American spacefarers to begin their first odysseys across the ancient volcanos and disappeared oceans of the mysterious orange-red orb.
'In the next few years, there is talk by many institutions and companies of sending many vehicles to the surface of Mars,' in the lead-up to astronaut flights, he says.
'Losing these [Mars Network] orbiters reduces our options for providing relay support to future missions.'
One of the leading lights in NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Gladden has co-written a cascade of breakthrough papers on the Mars Relay Network that he oversees, its history in providing orbital beacons for NASA spacecraft as they approach Mars, and its potential to guide future space pilots to perfect landing sites.
The Mars-encircling coalition of satellites represents a grand space entente between NASA and the European Space Agency, with the U.S. sending the Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and MAVEN spacecraft to circumnavigate the planet, and ESA deploying its Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter.
The president's scheme would halt a grand space entente between NASA and European Space Agency ... More around Mars, and halt funding for ESA's Mars Express orbiter, part of the Mars Relay Network that has been pivotal to safe spacecraft landings on the Red Planet. AFP PHOTO/ ESA /Illustration by Medialab (Photo credit should read -/AFP via Getty Images)
This orbital alliance 'represents a highly successful international collaboration and continues as critical infrastructure for NASA's and ESA's ongoing Mars exploration,' Gladden states in one paper he co-authored with vanguard space-tech scholars at JPL, which is affiliated with the California Institute of Technology, one of the top science universities in the U.S.
But under the new blueprints for NASA sketched out by the White House, funding for two of the American orbiters, and one ESA spacecraft, would be terminated to recoup the minimal cost of their continued operations.
In a preface to the White House's proposed draconian downsizing of the American space agency, its acting administrator, Janet Petro, concedes that NASA will be forced to cut away at its ranks of illustrious scientists.
While professing 'to prepare for human missions to Mars,' Petro adds that NASA's slashed funding would likewise trigger halts to an array of Red Planet-focused science missions.
So far, Gladden tells me, 'We have not yet received direction from NASA HQ to stop work on these [Mars Relay] projects, and we wait for further instruction.'
Gladden's team says that even while roboticists and aerospace engineers at JPL were testing Perseverance and Ingenuity for their Mars quest, the orbiters helped mission planners 'select scientifically interesting landing sites and properly design the vehicle for successful delivery to the surface of Mars.'
The Mars orbiters helped NASA mission planners select the perfect landing site for the Perseverance ... More rover and the first interplanetary helicopter Ingenuity to start exploring Mars. (Photo illustration by NASA via Getty Images)
The flightpaths of two of these satellites were altered to pass over the target landing zone at the precise moment when Perseverance began its atmospheric entry and descent to the Martian surface, and the orbiters beamed the spacecraft's telemetry back to Earth, tens of millions of kilometers distant, in near real-time.
With the help of these satellites, 'the events of the Perseverance landing were broadcast live from JPL to the world,' they say.
This dual-planet livestream 'allowed everyone to share in the excitement (and 'terror') of the day.'
'The images returned thereafter included … video of the landing itself taken from a variety of vantage points, and eventually the historic images of the first powered flight on another planet.'
The orbiters' high-resolution cameras had earlier mapped the ordained touchdown site, producing sophisticated atlases that enabled the AI-enhanced rover and rotorcraft—both equipped with computer vision—to navigate their alien surroundings the moment they began moving across the ghosts of waterways that once rushed through Mars.
NASA's Perseverance rover landing safely on Mars. Mars orbiters imaged the entire descent and ... More touchdown of these robotic explorers, and could perform the same function for future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images)
Since then, the Mars satellites have acted as a super-speed web of cosmic messengers, passing data, imagery, software changes and commands between the Martian robotic scouts and their commanders across NASA.
Yet if the White House scheme to axe three-fifths of the Mars constellation is executed, Gladden tells me, 'Shuttering [the orbiters] Odyssey and MAVEN would have significant impacts on the relay network.'
'Odyssey, operating in a sun-synchronous orbit that passes over the rovers at about 7 pm each day, is uniquely positioned to receive data from the rovers at the end of their work day.'
'The return of this data on that timeline facilitates next-day planning, which enables the rover teams to ensure that each day on Mars is a meaningful one.'
MAVEN, he adds, 'has a very robust radio system. It can move more data than any of the other orbiters and actually holds the record for the most data returned from a single relay session.'
'Losing access to either (or both) of these orbiters would require the rover projects to slow down their operations and reduce the amount of data that can be returned from the surface of Mars.'
That would threaten not only twin-planet communications with these robotic scouts, but also with any astronaut corps sent to Mars in the future.
But if an alternative future emerges—one where NASA's Mars Exploration flights are instead revived with a new boost in financial backing, Gladden says, 'We can more intentionally build up the relay network to continue supporting the robotic exploration of Mars and hopefully be ready for human explorers.'
The fantastical Mars orbiters can image the atmospheric entry and touchdown of spacecraft sent from ... More Earth, including those carrying future astronauts (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Xinhua) (Xinhua/NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images)
One of the Jet Propulsion Lab's foremost scientists says the futuristic outpost is still hoping against hope that the president's plan for NASA will be overturned by Congress.
'It is very, very important to understand that the budget process is not yet concluded.'
'Though the president's budget proposed the shuttering of these [Mars Relay] efforts,' he says, 'Congress has the final say in how much money is allocated to NASA.'
'They can itemize that budget to specifically reinstate missions that were zeroed out by the president's proposed budget.'
'This does occasionally happen,' he adds.
There are already signs that the most powerful advocates of NASA retaining its position as the supreme global leader in spaceflight and in exploring the solar system could rally to overturn the president's plan to strip down the agency.
The US Congress has the power to overturn the president's plan to radically downsize NASA, and save ... More the agency's world-leading planetary exploration missions (Photo by)
Senator Ted Cruz, a longtime champion of NASA and its breakthroughs across the realm of space, recently introduced a special appropriations bill that would astonishingly add $9.99 billion to NASA's funding, which would allow it to catapult even higher ahead of the other world space powers.
Cruz's White Knight legislation specifically provides $700,000,000 for the procurement of 'a high-performance Mars telecommunications orbiter that is capable of providing robust, continuous communications for … future Mars surface, orbital, and human exploration missions.'
The senator's amazing lifeline to NASA also reverses a death sentence the president's plan placed on the colossal Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule - a sentence that was set to take effect after the Artemis III lunar mission that would land the first Americans on the Moon since the last millennium. Cruz's special appropriation would extend the lifetime of the SLS/Orion at least through the late 2020s.
Back at JPL, Roy Gladden, torchbearer of the Mars Relay Network and of its future, says the $700 million outlined in Senator Cruz's NASA-rescue bill 'would be fantastic if that were to come around.'
Cruz's NASA-wide boost, and the specialized allocation for orbital spacecraft around the Red Planet, could push forward the construction of a next-generation Mars relay constellation, he says, and the lofting of the first American discoverers to trek across the flame-colored planet.
This future-tech version of the Mars Network, Gladden predicts, could in turn become the seed of a fantastical Solar System Internet that connects the Earth's eight billion citizens with the robots and aeronauts spreading out to explore all the planets and moons circling the Sun.