As most everyone knows the two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity have FAR outlasted their original life span. They both landed on Mars in 2004 and have been going steadily since then. Their contributions to science have been phenominal, signs of water and even life have been found. Both rovers were expected to fail long ago, and thus were built and budgeted with that in mind. Instead NASA has been able to repeatedly get the Rovers back up and running.

Unluckily the Mars Rover program is facing $12 million in budget cuts over the next two years. The money is being rerouted to the Mars Science Laboratory program for some future missions. It’s a hard option, but the choice is cut the money from the Rovers now, or pay more for the MSL later on.

Of course the greater threat is the decrease in discoveries coming from the Rovers, Spirit in particular, in the next year or so. We can only hope that NASA gets some more money, or someone with cash on hand can sponsor the program before it gets cut totally.

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