With President Bush’s sights set on a manned mission to Mars, Earth sciences have been forced to take a back seat where funds are concerned – so much so that the network of satellites monitoring the health of the planet is in disarray, the US National Research Council warned on 27 April.
With six recent NASA Earth-observing missions being delayed, scaled back or cut altogether, scientists fear that there will be a serious paucity of information once today’s satellites retire. “The planning for new missions should probably have been started 5 to 10 years ago,” says Richard Anthes, president of the…
