Flagships Martian Missions Impossible with New Budget

High-risk, high-reward missions to the Red Planet will no longer be possible with the new budget proposed for the American space agency, analysts say. Spacecraft such as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) are currently placed on hold indefinitely.

NASA will only get $1.2 billion for its planetary science programs, which is $300 million less than in 2012. To make matters worse, there is no promise that funding levels for this sector will increase; in fact, further cuts are to be expected, Space reports.

While the $485 million MAVEN mission is still scheduled for launch in 2013, no other important mission towards Mars will be taken into consideration in the foreseeable future. In addition, NASA has recently announced that it's retiring from joint projects it had set up with the European Space Agency.

While NASA officials and President Obama are going on about a strong US presence in space, the fact of the matter is that, sadly, NASA is declining from its former glory, not moving forward victoriously.