Washington

Mission impossible? The Pluto–Kuiper Express is under threat. Credit: NASA

The proposed $1 billion cut to NASA's budget request is aimed at the small, focused science projects that are a hallmark of the agency's ‘faster, better, cheaper’ philosophy, observers say.

The committee “cut the programmes that had the least political constituency,” says one congressional staffer. These include Discovery planetary missions, the Explorer programme and a line of low-cost Earth Probes.

The House appropriators cut $265 million from the $2.2 billion request for space science and $301 million from the $1.46 billion Earth-science request. Cuts in the Explorer programme would stop NASA initiating new small and medium-sized missions in space physics and astronomy. Among endangered Discovery projects are the CONTOUR mission to tour several comet nuclei, the Deep Impact asteroid probe and the MESSENGER mission to explore Mercury. Also under threat are the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, US participation in Europe's Far Infrared and Submillimetre Telescope, and the Pluto–Kuiper Express mission.

Two Earth science projects would be lost: the Triana spacecraft to provide continuous pictures of Earth, and an Earth-viewing radar called LightSAR. Work to develop a follow-on to the Earth Observing System multi-instrument platforms would stop.

The cuts would hit academic scientists too: NASA estimates that a $35 million reduction in its research budget would eliminate 600 grants.