Belt-tightening at NASA has forced the space agency to cancel a planned $500 million Mars orbiter that was expected to be built by Lockheed Martin. <\/p>\n
Negotiations between the aerospace company and NASA had been expected to lead to the award of a design-and-build contract for the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. \u201cIt\u2019s obviously a painful decision,\u201d Dantzler. \u201cWe canceled MTO because we simply don\u2019t have the money in the future budget to support it.\u201d <\/font> <\/p>\n Dantzler said the decision is final. <\/font> <\/p>\n The orbiter was to be the first craft in a network of Mars communications satellites. The orbiters would relay data collected by robotic surface rovers, including the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for launch in late 2009. <\/font> <\/p>\n \u201cObviously when we lose an opportunity like this that was within our grasp, it\u2019s disappointing,\u201d said Steve Price, director of business development for civil space at Lockheed Martin Space Systems. <\/font> <\/p>\n The loss of the orbiter means there is now more riding on a successful Aug. 10 launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, built at Lockheed Martin\u2019s Waterton Canyon facility southwest of Denver. <\/font> <\/p>\n The Reconnaissance Orbiter will now serve as the main relay for the data to be returned by the science laboratory. <\/font> <\/p>\n SpaceX launch tickets (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/p>\n \u201cWith the cancellation of MTO, the burden now falls on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter,\u201d Price said Thursday. <\/font> <\/p>\n Since the telecommunications orbiter was designed mainly as a data- relay spacecraft, not a science probe, it was considered by some NASA officials to be \u201cthe thing that had to go,\u201d Dantzler said. <\/font> <\/p>\n It had been slated for launch in 2009 and would have pioneered the use of lasers for planet-to-planet communication. The spacecraft also would have tested techniques that will be needed to bring Mars rocks back to Earth. <\/font> <\/p>\n The orbiter\u2019s design was based largely on the Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will be the largest and most sophisticated spacecraft to circle Mars. It is scheduled to launch from Florida aboard a Lockheed Martin Atlas V, also built at Waterton Canyon. <\/font> <\/p>\n About 1,000 Lockheed Martin employees worked on either the spacecraft or the rocket, said deputy project manager Dave Olschansky. <\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Belt-tightening at NASA has forced the space agency to cancel a planned $500 million Mars orbiter that was expected to be built by Lockheed Martin. Negotiations between the aerospace company and NASA had been expected to lead to the award of a design-and-build contract for the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter. But the mission was canceled last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBut the mission was canceled last week to cut costs, said Andy Dantzler, director of NASA\u2019s solar system division. <\/font> <\/p>\n