While a flashy mock Mars rover parades across the country, the real ones have never been more in danger of losing touch with Earth. “NASA is barely keeping the Mars Exploration Program on life support,” a new review finds.
The best looking Mars rover on Earth went on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum last week. The “concept vehicle” appears expensive, sturdy, daring, cutting-edge — basically everything that today’s NASA is not.
“It’s a weird mixture of the Curiosity rover, the Batmobile, and an acid trip,” NASA’s Dave Lavery, program executive for solar system exploration at the space agency, told BuzzFeed News at the museum.
This 5,500-pound aluminum electric truck is nearly 24 feet long and 14 feet tall, and can detach its back half, a mock geology lab. Unlike NASA’s beloved Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, this one has not gone to Mars, and never will. It was built, at the undisclosed expense of the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, to be showcased in parades and exhibits all over the country this summer, wowing the kids.
“If we get a single scientist out of this effort, it will have been worth it,” Therrin Protze, chief operating officer of the visitor center, told BuzzFeed News. “You are basically looking at a concept vehicle that is intended to be inspiring to future generations.”
The reality of the Mars program is nothing like the museum dream car.
The reality of the Mars program is nothing like the museum dream car. NASA, which celebrated its 59th birthday on Saturday, has only a tentative strategy to get to Mars (or anywhere else), and nowhere near enough money to do it. A Congressional hearing last week asked why the Mars 2020 rover will cost $2.1 billion, plus another $300 million to run for a Martian year. That’s $900 million more than the original $1.5 billion estimate for its cost, and NASA only gave 70% odds it would meet that budget number.
The reality of the Mars program is the Mars 2020 Rover behind schedule and at risk of blowingits 26-day launch window, according to the Government Accountability Office, while the space agency is trying to figure out how to pay for it at the same time as a big-ticket mission to Europa and a successor rover designed to collect rock samples from Mars.
The reality of the Mars program is a Congressman, at a public hearing, asking NASA scientists about ancient aliens.
“Was it possible there was a civilization on Mars?” asked Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California.
“There’s no evidence that I’m aware of,” replied Mars Rover 2020 project scientist Kenneth Farley of the California Institute of Technology, heroically suppressing any hint of a smile.
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