President Obama’s plan to cut funding for the Planetary Exploration division at NASA in 2013 may slow or put a halt to some Mars exploration projects, but given the state of the economy, this is a necessary measure.
Next year’s budget request, released February 13, would cut funding for Planetary Science by 20 percent, lowering the division’s budget by $309 million. Although the exploration of other planets plays an important role in advancing technology and adding to our understanding of our own planet, it should not be the focus of government funds during an economic crisis that is hitting hard here on Earth.
Supporters of Planetary Science were disappointed the cuts meant NASA pulled out of the ExoMars project, a multi-billion dollar robotic Mars exploration project in which NASA would have partnered with the European Space Agency.
The goal of the project was to send an orbiter and a rover to Mars in 2016 and 2018 to search for evidence of life, and the project was supposed to be a big step towards eventually sending humans to Mars, according to a February article published by Universe Today.
Although it is sad to see NASA pull out of such a huge program, the country cannot afford to fund such an expensive project, especially one that will not have an immediate effect on Americans.
Exploring, and eventually colonizing Mars has long been a dream of planetary scientists, but it would not have been accomplished any time soon, Susan McBride, astronomy teacher, said.
“The systems in order to colonize Mars are such a big deal, so in order to say that NASA was going to do that in so many years, I doubt it,” McBride said.
Sending humans to the Red Planet would take many years of preparation, including building a spacecraft that could take humans to Mars quickly enough, creating a food system that could sustain the astronauts for the entire trip, waiting until Earth and Mars are closest together to launch, and accounting for dangerous solar winds, McBride said.
“It was an ongoing process that they were just starting, so I don’t think they were far enough yet to get to that point [of sending humans to Mars],” McBride said, “so if they cut it, I could see that.”
Instead of funding expensive trips to far off planets in the distant future, the government should allocate more of its funds to organizations that will help with the situation here on Earth. The unemployment rate and housing crisis are more urgent problems than the lack of exploration on Mars and affect the lives of many more Americans.
If next year’s budget does cut from Planetary Science, Congress will have made the right decision for America.