The Fall of Mars

The problem was that Carter’s budget, released at the beginning of 1979, had no money for any new planetary missions. Although holding back on Mars—about which there was still division as to what to propose in the near term—NASA had hoped to begin work on a mission to Venus, as well as one to Halley’s Comet. The Halley’s Comet mission was seen as an opportunity to take advantage of Halley’s once-in-a-generation return to Earth’s vicinity. When Carter elimi­nated any new start in planetary science, NASA had to accommodate Venus, Halley’s Comet, and Mars within a budgetary category allowing discretionary spending for exploring possible future work. That category now was taxed to the full and then some. Hinners and Murray had to decide on priorities, and Mars gave way to Venus and Halley’s Comet.33

Abruptly, almost all work was cancelled at JPL on Mars. “We are not cutting back on Mars work because of diminishing interest in Mars or in the follow-up [to the Viking] mission,” said Geoffrey Briggs, who had taken over as acting director of the Office of Space Science and Applications’s Planetary Division. “Although the planning and design of a new Mars mission is being reduced to a fairly low level, we will be maintaining to a much higher level the analysis of Viking Mars data we now have.”34

Steve Squyres, a recent Cornell PhD, who had been inspired by Sagan and other Viking researchers, ran into contrary advice from various senior plan­etary scientists. “Don’t focus on Mars,” he was told. It was a career “risk,” they said.35 The atmosphere at JPL was such that many scientists were discouraged from pursuing Mars work. John Beckman, planetary program manager at JPL, declared, “Our knowledge of Mars now vastly outreaches our knowledge of Venus and other planets, and it’s time to even up our knowledge and balance our approach.” He said he doubted NASA would get back to Mars until the 1990s.36 Daniel McCleese, a young scientist at JPL, recalls that when he talked up Mars, “I ran into a very, very strong pushback from NASA, along the lines of ‘We’ve gone to Mars with Viking. It is a dead planet, no longer very interesting to NASA, and we are headed for the outer planets.’ ”37

At the end of 1979, Carter’s OMB called for no new starts in planetary science for a second year in a row. This was a decision that had implications not only for Mars but extending to other robotic science programs as well. Frosch appealed to Carter, who forced Frosch to choose among various projects that might get a go-ahead. Frosch was not about to sacrifice an astronomy mission, the Gamma Ray Observatory, for a Halley’s Comet project, the priority for Murray and other solar system researchers. The president said he also favored the Gamma Ray Observatory because of his interest in black holes, about which he had been reading of late.38 Planetary exploration was put in a position secondary to astronomy missions aimed at the cosmos. The mission to Halley’s Comet was not going to happen, at least one led by the United States. There was a sharp disconnect between Carter’s avowed personal excitement about space explora­tion and his spending decisions.

Whatever potential NASA had for a Viking follow-on was lost in the transi­tion from Ford to Carter and NASA’s continuing ambivalence about what to do next. The ambivalence arose from the fact that most Mars advocates wanted to

take the next steps beyond Viking—a rover and then MSR. But NASA leaders also knew they could not possibly sell such an ambitious mission in the political environment the agency faced.