Just found out today at a MER all-hands meeting that both MER and Odyssey will each be suffering an immediate $4 million budget cut to help defray the cost of MSL. Read more here: http://martianchronicles.wordpress.com/200...rs-budget-cuts/

Sorry to hear about it. There was at one point a proposal for "targeted tax cuts". I wish we could make "targeted tax payments". All my "discretionary" taxes would be dedicated to the space program!

I'm writing emails to people to see what, if anything, can be done from a public voice perspective.

Not like this. Please not like this.

I'm sure Emily's aware; hopefully, TPS will come out swinging.

What kills me is that this is about a lousy $8 million; that is CHUMP CHANGE in terms of government spending!!! However, half of it also represents more than a third of the MERs' remaining operating budget this year, which is devastating.

Somebody's not thinking this through, IMHO.

Just got in from work to find this news. Unbelievable.

Obviously it's tempting for everyone to come out guns blazing right now, and fire outraged emails off in all directions, but clearly we'll have a louder voice if we work together and work to a plan, too. We need to know exactly who to write to to protest about this, and to get as many people onboard as possible, right across the online space community. I'm sure TPS and UMSF, plus Phil over at Bad Astronomy, plus Universe Today, Space.com and various other websites could have a very loud voice indeed if we all worked together.

Yup - I'd ask people to hang tight from the ranting and letter writing until we know exactly what, if anything, the public voice can do. Once we know, then we do whatever we can. But until we know what the best action is, it's best to wait.

Update : The official word is, hold tight for the next few days.

Stu is correct. In my job I am often on the receiving end of similar outraged letters and emails. Informed, intelligent and coordinated is a very powerful way to do this. Lashing out and hurling invective is incredibly counterproductive. So lets cool off, and I'd say watch Emily's column, I'm guessing TPS will get the best information the soonest.

Agreed. There are a lot of systemic factors to consider, and apologies for my initial outrage (I sent no nastygrams, though.) Main thing as I see it is that we don't know the budget wickets that have to be run through.

NASA is stand-alone, unlike most other Federal agencies that are part of huge departments, which with correspondingly large budgets have a lot more flexibility in rerouting funding. Eight million clams ain't much in the grand scheme of things, here. I'm--very--cautiously optimistic that there are some untapped means to ameliorate this.

hmm, maybe a sponsor can come to the rescue, but does anyone really want to see Spirit renamed "The Google Rover"?

Hey, absolutely no need to apologise for that! We're all gnawing on our knuckles here, I'm sure! But the main thing is to take a deep breath and figure out how to challenge this, seriously and through the proper channels, so we don't come across as a bunch of angry internet space geeks who are p****d that their hi-tech toys are being taken away from them. Once we identify the right people to target, and agree on a common message, that will allow us to make a solid, practical and economic case for keeping the rovers funded, then we can gather allies around us and move forward.

There may come a day when the rovers have to be abandoned. There may come a day when it simply makes no sense to keep throwing money at them. There may come a day when we have to accept that they've nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and should go to sleep.

But today is not that day.

Thanks for the words of encouragement, O Poet Laureate! Certainly in this community sanity and unity will prevail; I do cringe a bit at the thought of what others might be doing even as we speak, though...

Brellis, I hear ya; that's actually not the option I had in mind (but, gotta tell ya, at this point wouldn't mind seeing the MERs and Odyssey sponsored by Google, though never renamed. Hell, $8M is like the price of sixteen Super Bowl ads, maybe less!) What I was thinking of was finding other Federal funding that could be reapportioned.

Again, NASA's in a bit of a spot for this sort of thing because it's administratively not affiliated with any other agencies with lateral disbursing authority for operations & maintenance funding (AKA 3400 money), AFAIK. Still, it seems that some sort of arrangement should be possible, and I sure hope that any such options are being thoroughly explored.

A while back I wondered if due to budget constraints, operators would be inclined to attempt ever more suicidal stunts with their maneuvers, knowing that there would be no funding for further operations. How dangerous is hibernation? At what point would it be worth it purely for budgetary reasons to test the navigational limits of Spirit's abilities, as opposed to putting the baby to sleep and risking further budget cuts?

However this plays out, it is a great measure of success for the MER missions that the rovers have survived so far beyond expectations.

Truer words were never spoken. Gotta quote Doug as well, though: "Not like this. Please not like this."

...till they fall off!!!!!!!

Hi all,

It is important for everyone to realize that these budget cuts are not set in stone, not yet. The budget will be cut, yes, but it may not be by a full $4 million over the next 6 months. Steve and others in the MER team are working to soften the blow; part of this will include approaching Congress for some extra money. This is where you, and the public in general, can help.

Write to members of Congress. Particularly, write to members of the Science and Technology Committees as well as the Appropriations Committees, for both the House and Senate. Some of the members of these committees may in fact be your elected members of Congress; all the better. For a list of who is on the committees (and subcommittees), take a look at the following sites;

House Appropriations Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/...ommcode=happrop

Senate Appropriations Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/...ommcode=sapprop

Senate Commerce, Science, and Technology Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/...mcode=scommerce

House Science and Technology Committee
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/...mmcode=hscience

The letters don't have to be long, detailed, or technical. What's important is that they refer to the MER project, the budget cuts, and your support of the project and it's continued funding. Also, written letters arriving by mail have the most clout, with a fax coming in second. If you are a constituent writing your representative a letter, it means a lot.

Above all else, though, please be polite and positive in the letter. Don't rant and rave, put down other missions or projects, lay any blame, or deride individuals. This is very much a place where you'll catch more flies with honey.

Thanks to everyone for all of your support.

At the risk of being virtually pilloried by this crowd, would you prefer that they killed a rover through
miscommanding, like VL1 or MGS?

This is a pretty obvious "Washington Monument" ploy, not worth being that upset about yet. That said, does anyone think much more good science is going to be coming out of Spirit?

This has hit the wider media already...
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/bu...ct-mars-rovers/
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/24/mars-rover-reprieve/
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/03/24/n...over/index.html


Astro0

I am not sure that outrage is warranted. My understanding is that despite requesting a budgetary increase overall, the NASA budget request for Mars for the period of 2009-2012 was around $340m, well down from the $620m in last years forward estimates. So the reduction in MER funding is not a Government imposed restriction, but rather is exactly what NASA requested. So now NASA has to work within this self imposed budget. I am not sure what other Mars programs should be diluted to keep the MER funding up to the required level. Nor does it seem smart to call for diversion of funds from other programs. After all in only a few years the shuttle will be retired and the US will lose the capability to launch people into space until Ares 1 comes on line.

Sigh. Perhaps the end run for Von Braun was the way to go for Spirit.

Well, I wrote my congressman, BUT it already looks like both rovers are safe. So I suggested he introduce a resolution celebrating the Rover's accomplishments and commending the Rover team for promptly sharing their data with the public. Heck, I think that's WAY overdue.

--Greg

Huh? Greg, could you please expound on that a bit? Any info you can share here would ease a lot of minds.

Click on Astro's link to CNN above.

Ah...thanks, mchan.

"Mixed signals"...yeah, I'd say so. Hopeful, apparently...I guess...I suppose...argh?!?! "Confusing" is another way to put it.

Can't tell where the nuts and bolts of the situation end and the spin control begins.

The rovers in so many ways represent the best of what the US has to offer--leadership in exploration, willingness to take risks in exploring new frontiers for the sake of knowledge, an incentive for young people and those of all ages to once again become excited about the space program. It would be a crying shame to end a program that has been so successful and so inspirational in a day and age when cynicism too often trumps idealism.

If developments call for these cuts to go forward, there should be an organized effort to get them reversed, through letters from people on sites like this as well as astronomy clubs, schools, etc. It's just my opinion, but some members of Congress may not be that familiar with the rovers' mission and history and may be willing to take a second look at reinstating the funding once they are familiarized with their amazing accomplishments.

Yes.

There's definitely a spectrum along which missions fall according to how much more science a working craft can provide once it's done the once-over. Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping, but it was also obviously a diminishing return. Or a hail mary effort to dubious ends (like looking for mass movement).

In principle, Spirit could do a number of things, over an arbitrarily long period of time, for scientific gain. We don't know how much more distance it can traverse without failing. It could perhaps do some things outside the expected, like survey thoroughly for meteorites, or set off on a quixotic drive towards some [very] far-off landmark on the off chance that it would survive the trek. Perhaps even a return to Bonneville on the off-chance that some layering exists that couldn't be seen from the perspectives gained early in the mission.

This is, of course, all in the diminishing returns department. It's hard to say how much the science/dollar is, but then, that's hard to say with a newly minted mission as well.

I would argue that Odyssey is far more likely to yield more good science than either of the rovers, which will be lucky to go a few more km and which have pretty much already exhausted the capabilities of their payloads to find anything more out about the landing sites (barring some unpredictable serendipitous discovery.)

But, as usual, the orbiter missions are "boring" and the rovers aren't. Though this budget business is the only rover news I can remember getting any media attention for quite a while (years?)

Since the story came out today, I've been thinking about which activities Spirit would lose by going into hibernation now. Here's a short list of what would be lost from Pancam alone:

Tau profiles: Both rovers have a very data-dense profile going back 1500 sols with new values being recorded nearly every sol. Hibernating until October would mean losing ~200 sols worth of data, and by doing so Spirit may miss the first signs of dust activity coming out of winter (depending on when in October they wake Spirit back up).

Full-filter 360 stereo panorama: The McMurdo panorama, taken last winter by Spirit, was THE most detailed/lossless imaging campaign from a single location for either rover. This year's Bonestell panorama would be similar and has already begun, but we'll lose that if Spirit goes into hibernation now.

Long term monitoring: Including the El Dorado monitoring campaign (which showed some dramatic changes last winter) and some of the horizon/sky sequences

I'm missing many other possible activities, but even on the strength of these scientific opportunities alone, they should find $4 million dollars to keep a great project alive.

Here's a question I don't know the answer to: Say Spirit can no longer rove, but has enough power to continue some observations, in particular observations of weather phenomena like sky opacity and stuff like that. How valuable is it for the understanding of Mars' weather to have one continuous set of measurements from one point on the ground indefinitely? Spirit's not a real "weather station" -- it can't measure wind speed or direction or other properties of the air, at least not directly; but it can continue to gather records relevant to weather. Is having that one limited set of records from that one point worth spending a few to 10 million dollars over the course of a year? Or is the type of data that Spirit can gather so limited that gathering another year or two's worth wouldn't provide much further incremental benefit to Mars climatologists?

Mike, since you're the representative of the orbital community in this discussion, can you comment on what continuing science campaigns are being performed by Odyssey? I don't know much more to say about specifically why Odyssey needs to continue other than "More data good. No more data bad." And I'm sure there are much more intelligent things that can be said than that.

--Emily

In what is serendipitous timing, a piece on Odyssey science, after appearing in this week's Science, just broke in the big-time press (eg, New York Times).

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/319/5870/1651

"... Magellan obviously could have provided SOME science from additional radar mapping,..."

False.

Magellan's radar had FAILED. An electronics problem that changed from occassional-intermittent to constant (as I recall) wiped out Magellan's ability to do imaging. (It put the radar equivalent of a microphone-feedback-squeel in the transmitter or receiver or something). Magellan had aerobraked (in an engineering demonstration that paved the way for all subsequent Mars orbiters) into a low near-circular orbit and raised periapsis. From that orbit, radio tracking of the spacecraft provided a pole-to-pole uniform quality gravity anomaly map not possible from it's original orbit. The spacecraft was finally de-orbited in a series aerobraking dynamics tests as it's solar panels were failing and the spacecraft was about to go "power negative", due to solder joint failing in the solar panels caused by 8 venus years of thermal cycling, sped-up in the low circular orbit.

"...Spirit's not a real "weather station" -- it can't measure wind speed or direction or other properties of the air, at least not directly; but it can continue to gather records relevant to weather...."

What is the status of the MiniTES?... I thought that was essentially inoperative (unable to return useful science) on both landers due to dust contamination. But, I've seen that it's doing some routine observations on Spirit.

The rovers can (with MiniTES, if it's working) get thermal profiles of the lower atmosphere and see convective turbulence due to daytime heating, etc. They can also monitor atmospheric opacity, sky color and brightness, and clouds. The problem is how much this is worth compared with other science. There ought to be Viking-2 Winter and Viking-1 "Eternal Mission" type modes of repetitive cycle, fully automatic operation: Collect data for a week, dump it in a single communications session, whether anybody's listening or not. Should be.....

Slinted's comments and list of suggestions a few posts back are very much the sort of thing that can be automated. VL-1 did that sort of thing, a few targets re-imaged at intervals, a s....l....o....w....l....y built up panorama, etc. (note that the viking landers were extremely data volume limited on a direct link to Earth, much as the Rovers are now.

Actually, let's not be so quick to dismiss any offers like that. Is there anyone here who would object to Spirit or Opportunity being part-sponsored by Google or some other company if it meant their mission continued? Would it be such a bad thing? This might have to be the way things are in this cash-strapped future. Here's an idea, and a semi-serious suggestion: let Google put a Google logo on MSL, close to the calibration dial - or make the Google logo part of the calibration dial - if that kind of advertising would bring in a contribution that would allow the MERs to work on.

Looking at this practically, the money we're talking about here is very small change to today's business community, and sports community too. Here in the UK football players are "bought" and "sold" for tens of millions of pounds and a lot, lot more. Here and across the world, I'm sure, business people spend fortunes on extravagances, and $4m would be what we call "back of the sofa" money to them. Business people have already spent millions of pounds going into space as space tourists. The money is out there for this, if it comes down to sponsorship of some kind, I'm sure it is. The question is, what would such a sponsor get back in return?

Worth thinking about, I believe.

Our support is guaranteed and no less than you deserve.

Question: what kind of impact would letters arriving from MER supporters from the UK have on these Powers That Be? Excuse me for trotting out cliches here, but if we stressed things like the MERs' "contribution to the global scientific community", "value for the US's image", "proof of the superiority of US technology to overseas competitors", etc would that make a difference? I would personally be writing a letter including those points, and stressing too the value of MERs for public scientific Outreach, encouraging kids - around the globe, not just in the US - to take up careers in science and technology, etc etc, IF a letter arriving from overseas would help the campaign.

I think this is an important point because any such campaign would feature members of UMSF, TPS and other international communities, and a lot of people will be wanting to write letters of support.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6909656.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6970561.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6990813.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7137793.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7205004.stm

And of course, from Odyssey
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7205004.stm

That's the last 12 months from the BBC.

There is good science yet to come from Home Plate and the southern basin. It was a short Martian summer for Spirit. But just before that dust storm, Spirit had hit 800 Whrs and was ready to head south. The dust storm took away that chance, but, given the fact that it survived that storm, I think that it will survive this winter and can carry on to the features south of Home Plate. If it gets the chance.

From what I've heard - this is a waiting game anyway. There's likely to be some creative accounting and juggling over the next few days. Let's see where this actually ends up by the end of the week.

The thing to NOT do is lash out at one program or one mission. That doesn't get anyone anywhere.

Doug

The seemingly odd NASA response about not being willing to shut a rover down, given the inevitability of such a thing should these cuts stand, makes me really think that this was part of this NASA vs. the Mars program battle and possibly a bluff, and Squires and the media who are publicizing this may have just called them on it.

So one goes out for the Easter and when one returns this is the scenary?
No one messes with our babies...

Indeed lots of media intrest: NASA budget cut threatens MER duties!
I would hate to see the Mars Exploration Rovers' budget running out before the rovers do... But what if?

Although NASA Administrator Michael Griffin might be against a shutdown, if they'll have to make a choice I guess Spirit would become the victim as it has been doing a lot of five wheel driving (after problems with the right front wheel since March 2006). Moreover, Opportunity is in a far more interesting place

Cost per year to run the Mars twins is $20 million per year.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080324/ap_on_...5kyVt51AUGs0NUE

Looks like bad news?

The Odyssey cuts are equally nonsensical. Given the long lead time, big money and assumed risk required just to get an interplanetary spacecraft where it needs to be, it makes absolutely no sense to me to shut one down or intentionally limit its operations unless the vehicle's capabilities are severely impaired. Annual operating costs are trivial compared to the level of effort & expenditure needed to get them there in the first place.

I find it appalling that Odyssey & the MERs are apparently suffering for their superb reliability and longevity. Sure, these days we can always build something better after the fact, but the transportation lag and inherent risks of getting there at all (as well as the capricious nature of developmental efforts/funding) sure as hell reinforces the old chestnut about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush.

Moreover, if shutdowns of operational spacecraft becomes an acceptable practice, what sort of message are we sending to the contractors that build them? "Make it work for *** days...no more?" That's a slippery slope; planned obsolescence has no place at all in UMSF. Likewise, project team members probably would not find the prospect of abitrarily limited term employment appealing enough to stay on...it's gotta be brutal anyhow hoping that their babies stay alive as long as it takes to pay the bills & find another project willing to take you on after this one's done. Disregarding human factors in this system is extremely perilous.

I'd thought that Nasa (or whoever it is) would have been wise to avoid this debate so close to a Mars landing.
I'm not sure the people that are working so hard to make Phoenix lander a success are in their best mood now.
Communicating is essential but sometimes, they'd better think it twice.
I hope Spirit & Oppy will not be only two successful landing from 2004 to 2014.

Guys, just got the info that it seems like the situation is evolving quite rapidly...
There was also a request to give it a day waiting for something new.
Let us prepare ourselves...

I'd think your best bet would be to write to your MP and suggest he/she send some sort of supportive memo to NASA or Congress. Be sure to supply suggested wording. I got my Congressman to write a letter to NASA supportiing the Kepler mission (a long time ago), and his staff were even kind enough to let me know when the mission got approved.

It's hard to gauge how much impact personal letters from overseas would have, but I wouldn't think it'd be much -- unless there were a whole lot of them. A letter from an MP, though -- especially a 100% positive letter along the lines you suggest (to the effect that this sort of thing does wonders for America's image abroad) should be a completely different matter.

--Greg

I'm the representative of the orbital community? Then why am I working so hard on MSL?

Seriously, as others have said it's pretty hard to put a dollar figure on data bits. Certainly more GRS integration time leads to better SNR and higher spatial resolution in elemental abundance maps, and more THEMIS images is more coverage of more places in more bands. And THEMIS can monitor atmospheric temperature and dust globally. But there's some overlap with the MRO payload in that regard, so I would think the GRS dataset was the unique contribution of Odyssey.

"in this discussion," Mike, "in this discussion." Most people hanging out on UMSF are more than a little emotionally connected to the MERs and have less situational awareness of what's going on with the orbiters -- I figured, since you'd spoken up on Odyssey's behalf, you'd have more to say about what it's currently doing. I've been wondering about the value of long-term THEMIS atmospheric monitoring. Obviously MRO has MCS to do weather monitoring, but the MCS guys haven't yet delivered higher-level data products, and I'll bet having the THEMIS data set overlapping with them will help a lot -- especially since the elevation actuator problem on MCS has severely limited their ability to do nadir-pointing measurements.

To show you how much I (don't) know, I was under the mistaken impression that GRS was no longer taking data. That's one case where "more data good" is a pretty clear-cut benefit, for the reasons you mention.

--Emily

That message is explicitly stated as a requirement in every RFP for every spacecraft I've ever worked on, except it's usually 3x longer than the expected mission duration.

I've worked on spacecraft that blew up, were misnavigated into a planet, crashed, and were miscommanded into oblivion (and even a few that worked.) After all that, I'm skeptical that an explicit shutdown for cost-saving reasons would have much of a chilling effect.

Don't get me wrong, it may not be. I'm only involved with Odyssey to the extent that I get consulted when there's a hiccup with the THEMIS hardware, which hasn't happened for a while now.

EDIT: GRS is still releasing products to the PDS (last was in Jan 08). Could you be thinking of MARIE, which has been shut down for a while now?

Breaking news?

NASA: Mars rovers won't be cut
1 hour, 19 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES - NASA says it has absolutely no plan to turn off either of the Mars Rovers because of budget cuts. NASA is saying Tuesday that it has rescinded a letter that recommended budget cuts in the Mars Rover program to cover the cost of a next-generation rover on the Red Planet....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080325/ap_on_...HKf8Jxo8IZxieAA
No news source cited. Please excuse me if this was already posted--I haven't seen it yet.

The directive was rescinded an hour ago - there will be no shutdown of either Rover. Last weeks letter was removed from the table.
See http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080325/ap_on_...OlHz0gApw_737YB

My first thought was: w00t! Thank goodness it seems to have been a trial balloon. But a second, guilty thought occurs... presumably this means $8m in additional cost-saving now needs to be found elsewhere.

Any news on Odyssey?

(Two thoughts in one day? I'm going for a lie down.)

If you go to Google news and search for "Mars rover" you get 265 hits as a result of this cancellation/noncancellation.

If you look at the same thing a month ago, you see a trickle, most of which were extremely peripheral in so far as the Mars rovers actually being the topic.

Mission accomplished. Mars exploration and space exploration is in the news, and the tightness of their funding is the headline. That's the sound that this gunfire was intended to create. There was no actual target for the bullet.