“The Committee has significant concerns about the technical challenges facing MSR and potential further impacts on confirmed missions, even before MSR has completed preliminary design review,” stated the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee in its report on the budget.
That sucks, kinda seems like they’re saying ‘we don’t think you can do it on budget or on time so here’s even less money to work with’. To be fair there are valid criticisms of NASA going over budget and time but also feels like congress just doesn’t care that much about science
It seems most barely care about earth science. Why would anyone expect them to care about Mars science.
Every big program is appropriated annually; this isn’t a death knell, it’s just a vote of no confidence in the way things are. Proposed budget Is probably enough to keep the lights on during a reorg and rethink of the current mission scope, it’s just not enough to make forward progress. If they can get back in the box, I’d expect future appropriations to match the cost challenge Congress gave.
Of all the stupid things that Congress does, this feels…less stupid than usual. Usually they’d just cancel it outright.