(CNN) -- The much-celebrated Mars rover Curiosity is headed
for Mount Sharp, where it will help scientists explore the question of life on
Mars as it climbs up and up.
Meanwhile, however, NASA's budget
for planetary exploration is slated to go down, down, down.
Scientists are basking
in the success of Curiosity's stunning landing earlier this week, proving
that a complicated system involving a parachute and a sky crane can safely
deliver a 2,000-pound vehicle to Mars. The $2.6 billion Curiosity will spend
years roaming the planet, snapping photos and gathering scientific data.
Given the budget constraints
facing the space agency, however, there are limits on what the rover, and NASA,
will be able to do on the surface of the Red Planet. Although astronauts brought
back thousands of moon rocks during the Apollo Mission, there's never been a
sample of Martian material returned to Earth. Such a mission is considered a
priority, so scientists can do more detailed chemical analyses.
But it may not happen anytime
soon.
"We're optimistic, given the
success of our program, but we're anxious, too," said Richard Zurek, chief
scientist for the Mars Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California. "Like all of us, we're anxious about our country's ability
to be able to support and do these kinds of things."
NASA's budget for Mars exploration is slated to take a huge hit in
2013, dropping from $587 million to $361 million. It will then further decline
to $228 million in 2014 and $189 million in 2015, rising slightly in 2016 before
sloping upward to $503 million in 2017.
Researchers landed Curiosity on
Gale Crater, which is 96 miles across and may have once hosted a lake. Mount
Sharp, in the middle of the crater, is composed of hundreds of rock layers
accumulated over time. The rover will climb a small portion of the 3-mile-high
mountain, testing different layers to search for organic molecules that could
indicate the presence of life on the barren planet.
"We've demonstrated that we've
got a landing system that worked. And it worked well," Zurek said, referring to
Curiosity's dramatic touchdown. "The question now is: What will we use this for?
Or will we have to step back from that because those kinds of missions -- of
putting something that takes a metric ton down to the surface -- they're just
too expensive for our future?"
