NASA may say an early goodbye to the International Space Station (ISS) in order to kick-start missions to Mars.
The Trump administration's priorities for NASA, outlined in the proposed 2019 budget, suggest a hard, early cutoff for funding the ISS. The budget would also halt work on a high-end next-generation telescope and gut NASA's $100 million dollar education program.
It's all with an eye toward the administration's ultimate goal of getting humans to Mars by the 2030s. That's a vision former President Obama shared, but his ideas for what to do at the space agency in the meantime focused more on exploring asteroids and previously undiscovered corners of the solar system, not putting people back on the moon, which Trump wants to do soon.
Astronomers aren't happy about the changes, but the space agency says it has to make hard fiscal choices in the name of ferrying people back to the moon and eventually to Mars on a limited budget. After all, if you're going to travel almost 35 million miles into space and touch down on the surface of Mars, you might need extra cash.
The final decision on the plan is up to Congress, which will either greenlight the administration's new NASA proposal in full or make changes.
Assuming that the administration's plan gets approved as-is, here's what NASA is planning to do in order to reach Martian soil:
Before attempting to send any people to Mars, NASA needs to learn more about the planet. A new lander is scheduled to arrive on Mars in November 2018.
This Mars InSight lander, slated to land on the red planet in November, will scout out the spot where NASA hopes humans could land some time in the 2030s.
By examining the rocky surface of Mars, as well as the planet's core, scientists hope to gain a better understanding of how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed.
NASA scientists are calling the InSight mission Mars' "first health checkup in more than 4.5 billion years."
The launch, which was originally scheduled for 2016, has been delayed a couple years, as the agency redesigned some parts. That effort added $153.8 million to the cost of the lander, according to Space News, but it is expected to launch some time between May and June.
Bruce Banerdt, the mission's principal investigator, compared the InSight lander to a doctor that will give Mars a long overdue checkup.
"We'll study its pulse by 'listening' for Mars quakes with a seismometer," Banerdt said in January. "We'll take its temperature with a heat probe. And we'll check its reflexes with a radio experiment."
The mission is now going to cost NASA more than $828 million, Space News reported.
In 2019, NASA wants to spend $10.5 billion to get close to the moon again. That's over half of the space agency's annual budget.
The idea is to build a kind of lunar pit stop that would eventually help humans get to Mars.
The agency's latest plan includes a push for more public-private partnerships on outfits near the moon. That might lead to some swanky new moon accommodations from companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, or the newly formed Bigelow Space Operations.
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