Appropriations changes force cut to NASA’s Mars landing technology

Space News : The 2016 appropriations bill approved by Congress in December is a mixed bag for NASA’s space technology budget. The bill comes with an increase of $90 million over 2015 to $686.5 million. But Congress also moved the RESTORE-L satellite servicing project from NASA’s space operations budget to the space technology budget and allocated $133 million to the project. James Reuter, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for space technology, says the move meant that NASA had to cut $40 million from other programs. The major loser is the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), which was to receive $20 million in 2016. LDSD is a project to study inflatable decelerators and advanced parachutes as methods for slowing down spacecraft to land on planetary bodies with very thin atmospheres, such as Mars. So far LDSD researchers have performed two unsuccessful tests, and NASA has not decided whether to go forward with a third. NASA had planned to evaluate the project’s options, but the budget cut will severely limit the agency’s ability to do so.