The caller's comment reflects concerns that others have raised about NASA's budget in the past. The caller noted, "This Mars that you're talking about, we're $18-19 trillion in debt, and you want to spend billions of dollars going to Mars, and millions and millions miles away, and you'll never do anything with it if you ever do get there." Shortly before the viewer called in, Edwards, who currently serves as the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on Space, had briefly discussed with C-SPAN host Steve Scully her thoughts on NASA's Mars program. Senate seat in March, made the statement in response to comments from a caller in a C-SPAN interview that aired on October 15. In fact, NASA's 2015 budget is estimated to be slightly less than half-a-percent of the federal budget as a whole, and it hasn't accounted for more than two percent of the budget since 1969.Įdwards, a fifth-term House Democrat who announced a bid for a U.S. Given the amount of publicity that NASA has received in the past few months for its recent accomplishments-the discovery of flowing water on Mars and New Horizons' flyby of Pluto-we found Edwards' statement to be an intriguing one and wondered if it was true. But some space analysts believe this new mission could also help solve the money problems NASA has been struggling with, by potentially moving space exploration into the hands of private entrepreneurs.Pluto photographed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015.ĭonna Edwards of Maryland (D) said in an interview on C-SPAN earlier this month, "all of NASA's budget only accounts for, I think, less than 2 percent of our entire federal budget." The new funds, if approved, would double the money. House of Representatives discusses potential threats from space, following a meteor crash over Russia in February.Ĭurrently NASA's budget for identifying and tracking asteroids is roughly $20 million. The first test may come Wednesday afternoon when the Space and Technology Committee of the U.S. Still, in an age of austerity, there are sure to be fireworks in Congress over a $105 million proposal to chase down space rocks. To travel that distance will mean developing new technologies to power the spacecraft, since there are no gas stations in space. ![]() NASA is already working on building a rocket and capsule to take astronauts further than the moon-perhaps as far away as Mars. On April 15, 2010, President Obama called for a mission to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 after canceling plans for a manned mission to the moon. ![]() Kennedy first challenged the nation to go to the moon. One official is dubbing it the "boldest, most ambitious American space mission" since President John F. Ultimately, the plan would be to one day send a manned space mission to the asteroid. If that worst case scenario did happen, the hope is that the asteroid would burn up before reaching the Earth's atmosphere. The first step would be to identify an asteroid big enough to get a spacecraft to but small enough to manage in the event NASA lost control while moving it. "We were surprised to find technically this is well within our reach to do," said Tom Jones, a former veteran NASA astronaut and research scientist at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition. In the 1998 box-office hit "Armageddon" a group of oil drillers are hired by NASA to stop an asteroid the size of Texas from hitting Earth.īuried in President Obama's new budget plan released on Wednesday is $105 million to identify a small asteroid, capture it, and relocate it near the moon, according to an official familiar with the proposal. The White House is looking to turn science fiction into science fact. ![]() Ap- In its latest venture, NASA is taking a page from the script of a Bruce Willis blockbuster.
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