A Mars mission planned for early next decade will be pushed back for two years, from 2011 to 2013, the agency said late last week.
Officials are blaming an unspecified conflict of interest involving one of the proposals for the mission and a review group tasked with selecting between proposals. Because of that, the review panel has been dissolved, and a new one formed.
The two teams who are developing alternate missions, from the University of Colorado and the Southwest Research Institute, will now have until August 2008 to submit their ideas. NASA will choose between them by the following December.
According to the New York Times, both are developing relatively inexpensive missions that would orbit Mars and investigate why the planet's atmosphere is bleeding into space.
This is an interesting program, and one that may be a model for many future space missions in the U.S. and elsewhere. The so-called Scout program is aimed at launching relatively small, targeted missions that can be done relatively cheaply -- an estimated $475 million in this case, although the delay may raise the cost by up to $40 million, the Times reported.
With the huge costs of the manned Moon and Mars program hanging over NASA's head, these quick, simple projects could be a boon to scientists looking to gain data without getting caught too deeply in the politics of the agency's larger goal. With luck, this setback won't derail this project's overall momentum.
Mars Shot Is Put Off for 2 Years, NASA Says [New York Times]
(Image: Olympus Mons, a huge volcano (about the diameter of Arizona) on the Martian surface. Credit: NASA)
