What is Congress doing about it?

In this situation, it’s not useful to consider “Congress” as a single entity. There are factions within the U.S. Congress that hold mutually incompatible positions regarding MSR and, thus, JPL’s workforce woes.

On Feb. 1, 44 members of Congress, all from California, wrote and publicized a bipartisan letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget supporting MSR and demanding that NASA and the White House not throttle funding before Congress passes a budget. Representative Judy Chu, a leading signatory on the letter and whose district includes JPL, released a statement saying that she is “hopeful in the coming weeks we can work to broker a deal with the Administration and Congress to restore funding to the levels necessary to rehire workers.”

However, members of Congress from Maryland and Virginia released a letter opposing funding for Mars Sample Return, stating that “we strongly oppose funding for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) at [a] level any greater than the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science bill,” and specifically noting that Goddard Space Flight Center (not JPL) is their priority for NASA science funding.

Fundamentally, this tension can be traced to the broad curbs on federal spending passed last year. This has placed downward pressure on NASA’s budgets during a period of challenging and ambitious projects, including but not limited to Artemis, Dragonfly, the Roman Space Telescope, and establishing a post-ISS future in low-Earth orbit. At the moment, Artemis is winning the political battle for funding, and NASA’s science missions are struggling to secure funding as a result.

What is NASA doing about it?

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson released a statement lamenting the cuts, saying that “these painful decisions are hard, and we will feel this loss across the NASA family.” Notably, there was no broader commitment to MSR nor a call to restore the JPL workforce. He instead highlighted other projects, including Europa Clipper, NISAR, and NEO Surveyor.

NASA is in the midst of an extended review of the MSR project, and the project is functionally on pause. Agency leaders have not yet proposed a path forward and appear unlikely to do so before the April/May timeframe. The reasons for the long delay in responding to and replan of MSR are unclear.

What can I do about it?

The Planetary Society supports a considered approach to Mars Sample Return as part of a balanced science portfolio that benefits NASA facilities and workforce around the country. We've prepared a letter you can send to your congressional representatives, you can view and sign that here.

You can also join us in Washington, D.C., April 28 - 29 for our Day of Action, where you can advocate face-to-face to your representatives in Congress.