Charles Cockell: Danger of shelving a project that inspires and intrigues

Published on Saturday 11 February 2012 01:03

Mars – the Red Planet. Its surface captured the imagination of the Romans, who, in honour of its blood red colour, named it after their god of war.

Now, the exploration of this remarkable world is the subject of a new war: one of budgetary cuts in the US. No-one doubts that like most western countries, the US, including its federal agencies such as NASA, must make cut backs. We live in precarious economic times. But even the direst financial crisis should not stop humans exploring some of the fundamental questions about our Universe.

Missions in the last decade, including rovers that have landed on the surface and spacecraft in orbit around the planet, have revealed extraordinary things about Mars, a planet that could even be described as an Earth that didn’t quite make it. The exploration of Mars is about understanding another world, yes, but it’s also about understanding our own world and our place in the Universe.

Of the cuts proposed to NASA’s science budget, $300 million in total, two-thirds of this will come from Mars exploration. The effects of this are far-reaching.

The European ExoMars mission, a landmark of technical achievement for European space exploration and Europe’s first Mars lander, will potentially be jeopardized. The collapse of this mission would be a disaster for planetary exploration in Europe.

In a world where people are worried for their jobs, pensions and public sector pay, it might superficially appear that a few scientists fighting for the exploration of Mars is indulgent, even detached.

However, with the space sector growing at 10 per cent in the UK alone, the exploration of space is part of the future economy. To savagely cut the one part of it that draws enormous public inspiration and drives many young people into engineering and science, and to do it in such a way that not only destroys US science, but could cripple European planetary exploration, is, as the NASA associate administrator for science said when he quit over these decisions, “irrational and unjustified”.

• Charles Cockell is a professor of astrobiology at the University of Edinburgh and a director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology.

Related Articles

• Mars barred as Nasa set to slash budget for Red Planet

  THE dream of crossing the final frontier in search of life on Mars has been dashed after Nasa announced that financial cutbacks have forced it to scale back on missions to neighbouring planets.

  3 Comments

Logged in as:

Comment here. Start typing your comment here:

Post comment

Please adhere to our Community guidelines

Your view

Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.