Future exploration of Mars could be severely weakened if President George Bush's proposed budget for NASA is adopted as it stands, Cornell's best-known Mars scientist said in testimony to Congress, March 13.

Appearing before the House Committee on Science and Technology Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, astronomer Steve Squyres, the principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover mission, called the proposed budget "a valiant attempt to do a lot with a little."

Squyres found a lot of good news in the budget, including plans for atmospheric study, a solar probe, a mission to the outer planets, robotic exploration of the moon and healthy support for post-mission analysis that "turns data into scientific knowledge."

But in his own area of expertise, the exploration of Mars, he found cause for concern. NASA plans to launch a new orbiter to study the Martian atmosphere in 2013, another orbiter or lander in 2016, and in 2018 and 2020 the long-awaited two-step Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.

There isn't enough money in the budget to do all that, Squyres, who is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell, told the committee, adding that a study by 19 senior engineers, scientists and cost analysts, commissioned by the Office of Management and Budget, supported his statement.

The annual budget for Mars exploration has been about $625 million, Squyres reported, but the proposed budget cuts that to less than $390 million in fiscal 2009 and an average $350 million annually over the following five years, starting to ramp up again in 2017.

This would pay for the 2013 and 2016 missions, he said, but would not provide for developing the advanced technology needed for the MSR mission. The alternatives would be to eliminate the earlier missions -- which would result in a loss of scientific balance, Squyres said -- or postpone the MSR mission well beyond 2020.

In either case, he said, the Mars Exploration Program would "cease to be a truly connected program of exploration," noting that the National Research Council has graded the Mars program as the best of NASA's solar system exploration programs.

Another alternative, although problematic, would be to find a major foreign partner to share the expense, he said.

Squyres urged the committee to restore Mars Exploration Program funding to the levels specified in the fiscal year 2008 Congressional Appropriations Act. This, he said, "would allow continuation of a program that has captured the public's imagination and that is directly relevant to the central focus of ... NASA's vision of space exploration."