NASA Raids Outer Planets Budget To Fund Fast Start on Mars Reboot

WASHINGTON — NASA is starting the planning process for its scaled-back robotic Mars exploration program immediately and will use 2012 funds previously slotted for work on outer planets missions to shore up the effort.

NASA will spend about $30 million

in 2012 on its retooled Mars exploration program, a cross-agency effort known in budget documents as Mars Next Generation.

In total, NASA plans to spend approximately $700 million on the mission. It is tentatively penciled in for launch in either 2018 or 2020. Mars Next Generation was conceived to fill the void NASA's planetary science program created after big cuts in the White House's 2013 budget request forced NASA's exit from the joint ExoMars sample cache-and-return campaign with the European Space Agency and Russia. Those missions remain slated for 2016 and 2018.

"NASA is committed to develop an integrated strategy to ensure that the next steps for the robotic Mars exploration program will support science, as well as longer-term human exploration and technology goals," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars] 

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