The Mars Society’s odd call to arms

NASA announced thursday that it will provide an “update” Friday on next year’s scheduled launch of the Mars Science Laboratory. MSL is the giant Mars rover with a correspondingly large—and growing—price tag. As Aerospace Daily reported last week (and others have reported in recent days), budget and schedule concerns could cause MSL to miss its 2009 launch window. The mission could slip until 2011 or, in a worst case if unlikely scenario, be cancelled outright.

The specter of cancellation spurred the Mars Society into action with an “urgent” statement posted on its web site this evening and emailed to members and others. “Due to budgetary overruns, NASA and Congress may cancel the Mars Science Laboratory, which is scheduled to be launched to Mars in October of 2009 – in a vote that could be held as soon as Friday!” the statement claims. The message asked members and other supporters of the mission to contact their members of Congress and “[d]emand that the MSL be given a chance to succeed!”

All members of The Mars Society and the general space community need to join together to save MSL. Please contact your United States Senators and Representatives and tell them that MSL must be saved. In a time when the taxpayers of the United States already feel that hundreds of billions of dollars of their money is being wasted on Wall Street bailouts, the cancellation of MSL will mean that our government will be wasting at least another $1.5 billion that could have accomplished a mission of historic importance for the American space program and led humanity further down the path of its search for the nature of life in the universe. Quitting now is not fiscally responsible, and even worse, is a betrayal of the can-do pioneer spirit that not only built the space program, but America itself.

There’s one problem here: there is no Congressional vote scheduled for tomorrow—or any time in the foreseeable future—about the MSL. In fact, Congress is not even in session right now, as its members are focused on the impending election. A decision to delay or cancel MSL would be made by NASA alone. Congress could try to override that decision, perhaps in language in the final FY09 appropriations bill (assuming one is completed), but by then the 2009 launch opportunity would likely be lost.