How Budget Plans on Earth Might Stop Opportunity Rover on Mars by SciFri published on 2015-02-06T22:37:44Z More at http://scifri.me/xz8mtx This week, NASA unveiled its preliminary budget plans for the coming years. The budget request contains $1.36 billion for planetary science. The Mars rover Opportunity, however, is slated to receive no money in 2016. NASA officials said that the budget was a matter of balancing priorities in a time of limited funds, and that if there continued to be a scientific need for Opportunity, the agency would look for ways to continue funding the project. Steven Squyres, the principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, says that he’s still excited about the rover’s science prospects, and expects that funding for continued operations will be restored. Genre Science