Red planet road trip

How much do Americans love their cars? So much that when it seemed a vehicle on the planet Mars might be taken off the road, the media, government and public all stepped in to put a stop to the idea.

At issue: A relatively measly $4-million cut proposed in NASA’s Mars program, detailed in a recent letter to program directors from planetary science director James Green. In turn, Steve Squyres, the Cornell astronomy professor who serves as the principal investigator and very public face of the Mars Exploration Rover program, noted in news accounts that this might require the “hibernation” of the Spirit rover. The result was one of those discreet controversies in which, officially, nobody actually disagreed. The space agency quickly rescinded the letter, claiming it had never contemplated shutting down either of the beloved rovers. By the end of last week, a spokesman told The Times that “the letter doesn’t exist anymore.”

The Spirit and Opportunity rovers have arguably become NASA’s most recognizable characters in the four years they’ve been reporting back from the red planet. Part of that popularity is attributable to their stunning success -- the rovers’ expected operational life was a mere 90 days. But there’s also an element of sentimentality; to the fans who e-mail the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with poems and fretful inquiries, the machines are quasi-personalities, akin to R2-D2 and C-3PO.

Such fandom isn’t necessarily rational. After all, it may at some point make sense to cut the current rovers’ funding to make way for newer and better models, such as the much-delayed Mars Science Lab. Still, it’s a new experience for robotic exploration efforts to enjoy such public cachet. Manned space exploration has traditionally driven NASA’s public relations efforts -- a legacy that can still be seen in the administration’s 2009 budget request, in which funding for the moribund space shuttle and the vehicles being developed to replace it easily dwarfs funding for planetary science. Administrator Michael Griffin has taken important steps against budget mismanagement, but funding for any government program will always involve battles over scarce resources.

We have a rooting interest in seeing robots win battles like this one: JPL, where so much unmanned exploration originates, is in our backyard. Fighting for funds, like space exploration, isn’t easy. But even a machine can do it.