The US government under the leadership of President Obama is all set to cut corners for the fiscal year 2016. James Green, the head of NASA Planetary Science Division has been reported as telling Space.com that the current budget issues by the government is not enough to cover all the projects at NASA.
Green added that the Lunar Renaissance Orbiter and the Opportunity Rover, the veteran Mars Robot have been zeroed in on the budget issued.
The Lunar Renaissance Orbiter (LRO) was launched by NASA in June 2009 and has been helping the scientists with high quality images and data to help understand the process of evolution of the Moon and the conditions prevailing thereon. Paul Spudis, a space scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said that the LRO is in a stable orbit and has been sending high quality images of the lunar surface. He added that if the LRO prolonged its operation for a few years, then it would be possible to obtain the global high resolution map of the Moon, as reported by ExtremeTech.
Moreover, the Opportunity Rover robot has been the Martian surface for almost eleven years now following a landing in the Eagle Crater in January 2004. Steve Squyres, the Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York has told Space.com via email that the Rover is in excellent condition and has been poised around Marathon Valley which is a hot spot for obtaining research data.
Vouching for the perfect health of the LRO and the Opportunity both Spudis and Squyres seem optimistic about the provision of grants for their respective projects.