NEW YORK: There’s tough news ahead for fans of NASA’s plucky Opportunity Rover or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The most reason budget proposed by President Obama nukes both ongoing missions, zeroing out their budgets. If the budgets pass as written, NASA would either have to find funds to continue the projects from discretionary funds (if that’s even an option), or wind them both down and conclude the probes’ respective missions.
Both the LRO and Opportunity have their respective advocates and backers. Paul Spudis, a space scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston told Space.com that he’d like to see the satellite reactivate its bistatic radar. Currently that instrument isn’t being operated due to budgetary shortfalls, but the radar is capable of scanning the moon’s surface to measure the location and amount of ice in various crater pockets across the moon. Such information would be of significant practical benefit. Any serious plan for a long-term habitable moon base would make use of lunar ice for drinking and for plant growth.
Meanwhile, on the Red Planet, Opportunity’s operators just finished resetting the rover’s flash memory. For the past few months, Opportunity has been operating with no flash memory at all, meaning it transmitted data as the data was generated. Bringing the rover back to full operating potential increases its ability to perform scientific observations and carry out experiments.
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