The pinpoint landing of the rover Curiosity on Mars early Monday went as planned, to the jubilation of NASA scientists. But the budget for the Mars program is on the chopping block, as Washington grapples with debt and deficit.
Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity team member Miguel San Martin, Chief Engineer, Guidance, Navigation, and Control at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, left, celebrates with Adam Steltzner, MSL entry, descent and landing (EDL) of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), right, after the successful landing of Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 5.
Damian Dovarganes/AP
EnlargeEngineers and technicians behind NASA's Mars exploration program once again have turned in a performance worthy of a Michael Phelps: a gentle, pinpoint landing of a 1-ton, Mini Cooper-size rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars.
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Workers in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory cheered loudly when the Mars rover "Curiosity" landed successfully and sent back its first photos from the surface of the red planet. John Blackstone reports.The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission ? with the heaviest, most capable robotic explorer ever to land on another planet ? aims to help determine whether Gale Crater and its central summit, informally known at Mt. Sharp, could have hosted life early in Mars' history.
After an eight-month trip covering some 352 million miles, the rover's unique self-guided landing system planted Curiosity's wheels firmly on Martian soil at 1:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the navigation team reported before handing the rover over to a new shift. It took another 14 minutes for the rover's "I'm here" signals to reach Earth.
The landing took place with pinpoint precision: Preliminary data show that the rocket-powered sky crane that lowered Curiosity to the surface on cables set the rover down slightly more than a mile from the base of Mt. Sharp, the ultimate destination scientists have placed on the rover's itinerary.?
"That's extraordinary," says Chuck Baker, one of the planners behind the craft's successful trip.
During a post-landing briefing early Monday morning, John Holdren, President Obama's science adviser, noted that "by any measure this was the most challenging mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration.
"If anybody has been harboring doubts about the status of US leadership in space, well, there's a 1-ton, automobile-sized piece of American ingenuity, and it's sitting on the surface of Mars right now," he continued. "It certainly should put any such doubts to rest."
The success comes at a time when the US Mars exploration program is fighting for its life. The Obama administration sent a budget to Capitol Hill earlier this year that would cut funding for the program by 40 percent ? a level Scott Hubbard, the first director of the Mars exploration program and former head of NASA's Ames Research Laboratory, has called a "going out of business" budget.
NASA officials and planetary scientists have been meeting to see what sort of program they can salvage. Even if cuts end up less drastic than 40 percent, concerns over how to deal with the deficit and federal debt in Washington point to austere times ahead.
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