Reps. Schiff, Chu & Sen. Padilla Lead Bipartisan Letter to White House Urging Reversal of Premature Budget Cuts to Mars Sample Return Program
Members note that cuts to MSR will lead to layoffs, billions in canceled contracts and decades of lost science
Washington, D.C.— Today, Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led a letter with Representative Judy Chu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif,), co-signed by 41 other bipartisan Members of Congress from California, to Director Shalanda Young of the White House Office of Management and Budget, urging the reversal of devastating budget cuts to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.
“We write to express our opposition to the Administration’s recent unilateral decision to prematurely move forward with budget cuts to the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission before Congress has finalized Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations. This short-sighted and misguided decision will cost hundreds of jobs and a decade of lost science, and it flies in the face of Congressional authority,” wrote the Members.
The MSR mission, led by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, would launch a spacecraft from the surface of another planet and return it to Earth for the first time in human history. MSR will carry samples currently being collected on Mars’ surface by the Perseverance Rover—the completion of a decades-long project at NASA. The scientific community has for the past two decades identified MSR as the highest planetary science priority, and a recently-commissioned Independent Review Board (IRB) assessment of the program’s implementation plan and management approach reiterated that MSR should be a national space exploration priority, given its scientific and strategic importance.
While the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee recognizes this importance and provides $949.3 million for the MSR mission, equal to the President’s FY2024 Budget request, the Senate CJS bill set the funding level at just $300 million. Negotiations are still ongoing and Congress has not yet enacted final FY24 appropriations, the Administration and NASA have already directed JPL to begin operating as though MSR’s FY24 budget has already been cut to $300 million. In November 2023, a bicameral, bipartisan group of Members of Congress wrote to NASA expressing concern over this decision.
The Members continued, “If not reversed, this decision would ensure that JPL will not be able to meet the next launch window and will force a dramatic reduction of billions of dollars in contracts as well as the termination of hundreds of highly skilled employees. Already, smaller subcontracts on the project have been cancelled, impacting scores of small businesses across the country. The impacts of these layoffs will be detrimental not just in Southern California, but throughout the U.S. as our nation loses hundreds of extremely talented professionals responsible not only for the Mars Exploration program but also important Earth science and national security missions. If this uniquely talented workforce is lost to the private sector, it will be near impossible to reassemble. All told, these layoffs will result in decades worth of lost science, undermining the years of hard work and investments already put into NASA’s Mars Exploration Program and threatening the many years of future scientific discovery and innovation to come.”
Other signers of the letter include Senator Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.)and Representatives Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Grace F. Napolitano (D-Calif.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), Nanette Diaz Barragán (D-Calif.), Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), Norma J. Torres (D-Calif.), Ted W. Lieu (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Linda T. Sánchez (D-Calif.), Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.), Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.), Michelle Steel (R-Calif.), Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), Young Kim (R-Calif.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), J. Luis Correa (D-Calif.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.), Josh Harder (D-Calif.), Ami Bera, M.D. (D-Calif.), Raul Ruiz, M.D. (D-Calif.), Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), Scott H. Peters (D-Calif.), Juan Vargas (D-Calif.), Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and John Garamendi (D-Calif.).
Click HERE to read the letter.
Click HERE to read a November 2023 bicameral, bipartisan letter to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on the same matter.