Europe's Mars mission scaled back (BBC) {budget cuts}

[eppur_se_muova]

By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Le Bourget


The European Space Agency says its flagship Mars mission will lose a major instrument package to contain costs.

The Exomars venture will launch a rover to the Red Planet in 2016, to search for signs of past or present life.

It was hoped a static science payload called Humboldt could also be put on the surface to study the weather and, for example, listen for "Marsquakes".

But agency officials announced at the Paris air show that financial constraints now made this impossible.

Esa director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain said de-scoping ExoMars would also give extra margin to engineers who were concerned that the rover's design was pushing the limit of the maximum possible mass for the mission.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8102086.stm