Federal Agencies Brace for Deep Cuts Post-'Cliff'

Dec 7, 2012 4:22pm

Toby Jorrin/AFP/Getty Images

With the “fiscal cliff” quickly approaching, federal agencies are stepping up preparations for deep automatic budget cuts that will kick in Jan. 2 unless the White House and Congress can reach a deal.

The Office of Management and Budget told ABC News that a memo went out to federal agencies earlier this week seeking “additional information and analysis” in order to finalize spending cuts required if we go off the cliff.

The agencies are considering which workers to furlough, projects to put on hold and offices that will have to close.

The request follows the administration’s release of a 400-page report in September that outlined the budget areas to be impacted by the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts and what percentages they would be slashed.

READ MORE: White House Details ‘Doomsday’ Budget Cuts

Billions of dollars could be slashed from defense operations and maintenance programs. Medicare would take a two-percent hit, trimming millions in payouts to health care providers. Scientific research programs would be gutted. Aid for the poor and needy would be sharply curtailed.

The report also detailed operations that would be exempt from any cuts, including active-duty military operations, nuclear watchdogs, homeland security officials, veterans care and other critical areas.

READ: Pentagon Begins Planning for ‘Cliff’ Cuts

Asked about the agency preparations underway, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that OMB “must take certain steps to ensure the administration is ready to issue such an order should Congress fail to act.”

“Earlier this week, OMB issued a request to federal agencies for additional information to finalize calculations on the spending reductions that would be required,” Carney said.

“This action should not be read … as a change in the administration’s commitment to reach an agreement and avoid sequestration.  OMB is simply ensuring that the administration is prepared, should it become necessary to issue such an order,” he said. “OMB will continue to consult with agencies and will provide additional guidance as needed.  This is just acting responsibly because of the potential for this happening.”

Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com.

More ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Coverage From Today:

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BSE infected cattle have prions in saliva

ROGUE proteins responsible for mad cow disease have been discovered in the saliva of cows infected as part of an experiment. The finding might pave the way for a simple test for BSE before the symptoms are apparent.

The result from a team led by Yuichi Murayama at the National Institute of Animal Health in Tsukuba, Japan, also suggests, not for the first time, that saliva may be one way some prion diseases can spread. This group of diseases includes scrapie, chronic wasting disease and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of mad cow disease.

However, all available evidence suggests this method of transmission is highly unlikely. So far, the team stress there is no epidemiological evidence that saliva, milk, blood or spinal fluid from BSE-infected animals is infectious.

"Data from sheep with scrapie and deer with chronic wasting disease suggest the infectivity levels are likely to be very low," says Neil Mabbott of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, UK, who investigates infectious disease.

At present, diagnosing BSE is only possible by examining brain tissue after death, when the prions are visible as plaques. To find out if the disease could be detected in live animals, the Japanese team deliberately infected three cows. Then every four months, they screened samples of the cows' saliva using PMC, or protein misfolding cyclic amplification, which ramps up tiny amounts of prion to measurable levels.

In one cow, they detected prions two months before typical symptoms of mad cow disease would be expected to emerge. In the other two, prions were detectable just as the first symptoms began to appear.

"Once the infectious agent reaches the central nervous system, it may spread [away] from the brain to the salivary glands," the researchers wrote in their report (Emerging Infectious Diseases, DOI: 10.3201/eid1812.120528).

When BSE spiralled out of control in the UK 20 years ago, the source was incontrovertibly traced to cattle feed contaminated with brain tissue from infected cows. The Japanese research raises the possibility that it could also spread in body fluids through licking - a theoretical possibility that can't be ruled out by their current data.

The crux of the matter, says Richard Bessen at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, who is evaluating an alternative test for prion detection, is whether there's enough infective material in saliva to spread the disease. "Sure, it may occur in unusual cases, but it is probably not a major pathway for BSE transmission," he says.

"Epidemiological data indicate that in cattle, spread of BSE from animal to animal is very limited or absent, and so any shedding of BSE prions from cattle is very unlikely to spread the disease environmentally," says Kevin Gough, a pathologist at the University of Nottingham, UK.

Although BSE is now practically extinct globally, it still crops up unexpectedly. All researchers contacted by New Scientist said that a test to detect the disease in live animals before they developed symptoms would be invaluable to keep the disease in check.

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

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China's Xi to retrace reform trip

BEIJING: The new leader of China's Communist Party Xi Jinping will make his first official trip in the post to Shenzhen, the country's powerfully symbolic hub of economic reform, a Hong Kong newspaper said Friday.

Xi is due to become national president in March and the choice of the southern city for such a visit would "express his determination to further deepen China's reform," the South China Morning Post said, citing a local propaganda official.

The trip would echo a 1992 tour of Shenzhen by China's longtime leader Deng Xiaoping, who went there to underscore the importance of his policy of "Reform and Opening" as he sought to modernise the economy.

The city, which borders Hong Kong, served as an early "special economic zone" three decades ago, a laboratory of sorts as the Communist country began to seek foreign investment.

The experiment transformed Shenzhen from a small village to a bustling modern city and helped initiate years of roaring economic growth for the country.

Xi's father Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero purged by the late leader Mao Zedong and rehabilitated by Deng, oversaw the setting up of the economic zones.

Authorities stressed that they would continue "Reform and Opening" during a once-a-decade party leadership handover last month that put Xi in the number one spot.

His predecessor President Hu Jintao celebrated the "miracle" of Shenzhen in 2010 to mark the 30th anniversary of the special economic zone.

- AFP/ck

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FCC fast tracks text-to-911 service

Soon there will be more than just one way to contact 911.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced today that the four largest wireless carriers in the U.S. have agreed to fast track a service that will let people text the emergency 911 line.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile have all signed on and major deployments are planned to roll out in 2013 and the service should be fully available nationwide by May 15, 2014.

"Access to 911 must catch up with how consumers communicate in the 21st century -- and today, we are one step closer towards that vital goal," Genachowski said today in a statement.

Dubbed "Next Generation 9-1-1," the FCC has been working on this project for the last two years. When Genachowski first announced the plan to "bring 911 into the Digital Age" in November 2010, he referenced the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting when students tried to text police for help, but were unsuccessful.

The goal of the service is to offer people more ways to contact emergency officials, as well as improve the network to ensure it holds up for new communication technologies. According to Genachowski, a key component in Next Generation 9-1-1 is the rapid deployment of text messaging, photo, and video support.

A text-to-911 service could markedly help the millions of U.S. residents that have hearing or speech disabilities and are unable to make voice calls. According to the FCC, once the project is complete more than 90 percent of the country's wireless consumers will have the service.

While the service is getting phased-in, the mobile carries will send an automatic "bounce back" text message when any attempts to reach 911 via text message fail. This bounce back message would come before the text-to-911 service is available in a certain area.

Both AT&T and Verizon have been testing text-to-911 services over the past few months. In September, AT&T was given the go-ahead by the state of Tennessee to kick off a statewide trial service. Using a new Emergency Service IP Network, the test lets the carrier's subscribers send text messages to Tennessee 911 call centers.

For the FCC, however, getting Next Generation 9-1-1 implemented hasn't come easy. Several obstacles have stood in the way over the years, such as receiving approval for funding from Congress and getting all the major mobile carriers on board.

"This is good progress, but our work is not done," Genachowski said today. "Next week the FCC will consider further actions to advance text-to-911 for all consumers. We will also take additional steps in this area next year, including closely monitoring carriers' compliance with the commitments they have made today and addressing other aspects of Next Generation 9-1-1 such as enabling transmission of photos and videos to 911 centers."

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Space Pictures This Week: Lunar Gravity, Venusian Volcano

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  Cassiopeia’s Bubble

  Image courtesy T.A. Rector, UAA/WIYN/NOAO/NSF

  A new camera called the One Degree Imager, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, is responsible for this enticingly crisp image of the Bubble Nebula. Released on December 4, this closeup highlights the sphere of gas blown out by the nebula's central star, which is 45 times larger than our own sun.

  Located in the constellation Cassiopeia, the Bubble Nebula is ten light-years across. Intense radiation from the massive star causes the otherworldly glow that lights up what looks like a celestial soap bubble.

  (Related: "Amazing Hubble Images.")

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Midnight Light

  Photograph by Frank Olsen, My Shot

  Delicate green auroras light up the water at Buksnesfjord, Norway, in a picture taken just after midnight on December 4.

  (See pictures of auroras sparked by a massive solar flare.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Great Escape

  Image courtesy SDO/NASA

  Sheets of plasma—or superheated gas—break off from the surface of the sun in this image taken in extreme ultraviolet light. Before floating free, the plasma rose up and danced along pathways determined by magnetic fields. These unseen forces pushed and pulled the gas into contorted shapes.

  (Learn about the sun.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  New Look

  Image courtesy NASA

  What looks like a jawbreaker is actually a gravity map of the moon. Red areas indicate places with higher gravity fields while blue areas indicate lower gravity fields.

  (Learn about lunar exploration.)

  Twin probes circling the moon—part of NASA's GRAIL mission—since 2011 have been recording changes in gravity as they fly over peaks and valleys on the lunar surface. As one probe flies over an area with a greater gravity field, the washing-machine-size instrument speeds up slightly, increasing the distance between it and its sister probe. These minute changes in position have enabled scientists to construct this very detailed view of local changes in the moon's gravity.

  (How well do you know your moon myths? Take our quiz.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Grainy Picture

  Illustration courtesy L. Calçada, ESO/NAOJ/NRAO
  

  In this artist's conception of fine-grained particles around a brown dwarf—or a failed star—bits of debris are on their way to becoming a rocky planet.

  Current thinking on Earthlike, rocky planet formation says that random collisions between tiny debris occur in the disc of material surrounding newborn stars. But the recent discovery of such a disc surrounding a brown dwarf has some astronomers rethinking that hypothesis. If planets can form from the debris around these failed stars, then rocky planets may be much more common than previously thought.

  (Related: "Coldest Star Found-No Hotter Than Fresh Coffee.")

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Night Vision

  Image courtesy Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, Suomi NPP/NASA

  The Suomi NPP satellite captured this nighttime image of the aurora australis over the Antarctic coast south of South Africa. Despite the winter darkness and a waning crescent moon, the auroras produced enough light for sensors on board the new NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite to capture the boundary between the ice shelf and what some scientists call the Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean (dark line across the bright center swirl).

  Launched last year, Suomi NPP enables scientists to capture nighttime images of the Earth's atmosphere and surface. The new sensor is so sensitive, it can capture the lights from one ship at sea.

  (Learn about Antarctica.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Pearl Islands

  Image courtesy Michael Taylor, Landsat/NASA

  In NASA's Landsat 5 satellite image, the Mergui Archipelago shows off the vibrant greens of its rain forests and the brilliant blues of the surrounding tropical ocean. Located along the southern border of Myanmar (Burma), next to Thailand, the area is known for valuable pearl oysters (Pinctada maxima) and a highly diverse concentration of plants and animals.

  (See photos of Myanmar.)

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











• 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Venusian Volcano

  Illustration courtesy AOES Medialab/ESO

  The Venusian atmosphere is made mostly of carbon dioxide, along with periodic spikes in sulfur. Recent research has found that volcanoes on the planet's surface, seen here in an artist's conception, are likely injecting that sulfur into the upper atmosphere. Direct confirmation is difficult, however, since Venus's thick atmosphere precludes a peek at its peaks.

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  











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  Image courtesy SSI/ISA/ESA/NASA

  Published December 6, 2012

  
  

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John McAfee Out of Hospital, Back in Cell

Software millionaire John McAfee has been returned to an immigration detention cell in Guatemala after being rushed to a Guatemala City hospital via ambulance.

McAfee, 67 -- who soon may be deported back to Belize, where authorities want to question him about the shooting death of his neighbor -- was reportedly found prostrate on the floor of his cell and unresponsive.

He was wheeled into the hospital on a gurney. Photographers followed in pursuit right into the emergency room, but as emergency workers eased McAfee's limp body from the gurney and onto a bed and began to remove his suit, he suddenly spoke up, saying, "Please, not in front of the press."

Earlier today, McAfee had complained of chest pains, raising concerns he might be having a heart attack.

However, that did not appear to be the case. Hours after his emergency, hospital officials sent McAfee back to the detention center, telling ABC News they found no reason to keep him overnight.

In a phone interview overnight, McAfee told ABC News, "I simply passed out, everything went black."

He said he hit his head on the floor when he collapsed. McAfee explained that for the past 48 hours he hasn't eaten and had very little to drink.

McAfee had been scheduled to be deported to Belize, ABC News has learned. But a judge could stay the ruling if it is determined that McAfee's life is threatened by being in Belizean custody, as McAfee has claimed in the past several weeks.

McAfee's attorneys hope to continue delaying the deportation by appealing to the Guatemala's high court on humanitarian grounds.

Raphael Martinez, a spokesman for the Belize government, said that if McAfee is deported to Belize, he would immediately be handed over to police and detained for up to 48 hours unless charges are brought against him.

"There is more that we know about the investigation, but that remains part of the police work," he said, hinting at possible charges.

He added that a handover by Guatemala would be "the neighborly thing to do."

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Guatemala said that "due to privacy considerations," the embassy would "have no comment on the specifics of this situation," but that, "U.S. citizens are subject to the laws of the countries in which they are traveling or residing, and must work within the host countries' legal framework."

Guatemala's National Police/AP Photo

Software Founder Breaks Silence: McAfee Speaks on Murder Allegations Watch Video

John McAfee Interview: Software Mogul Leaves Belize Watch Video

Just hours before McAfee's arrest, he told ABC News in an exclusive interview Wednesday he would be seeking asylum in Guatemala. McAfee was arrested by the Central American country's immigration police and not the national police, said his attorney, who was confident his client would be released within hours.

"Thank God I am in a place where there is some sanity," said McAfee before his arrest. "I chose Guatemala carefully."

McAfee said that in Guatemala, the locals aren't surprised when he says the Belizean government is out to kill him.

"Instead of going, 'You're crazy,' they go, 'Yeah, of course they are,'" he said. "It's like, finally, I understand people who understand the system here."

But McAfee added he has not ruled out moving back to the United States, where he made his fortune as the inventor of anti-virus software, and that despite losing much of his fortune he still has more money than he could ever spend.

In his interview with ABC News, a jittery, animated but candid McAfee called the media's representation of him a "nightmare that is about to explode," and said he's prepared to prove his sanity.

McAfee has been on the run from police in Belize since the Nov. 10 murder of his neighbor, fellow American expatriate Greg Faull.

During his three-week journey, said McAfee, he disguised himself as handicapped, dyed his hair seven times and hid in many different places during his three-week journey.

He dismissed accounts of erratic behavior and reports that he had been using the synthetic drug bath salts. He said he had never used the drug, and said statements that he had were part of an elaborate prank.

Investigators said that McAfee was not a suspect in the death of the former developer, who was found shot in the head in his house on the resort island of San Pedro, but that they wanted to question him.

McAfee told ABC News that the poisoning death of his dogs and the murder just hours later of Faull, who had complained about his dogs, was a coincidence.

McAfee has been hiding from police ever since Faull's death -- but Telesforo Guerra, McAfee's lawyer in Guatemala, said the tactic was born out of necessity, not guilt.

"You don't have to believe what the police say," Guerra told ABC News. "Even though they say he is not a suspect they were trying to capture him."

Guerra, who is a former attorney general of Guatemala, said it would take two to three weeks to secure asylum for his client.

According to McAfee, Guerra is also the uncle of McAfee's 20-year-old girlfriend, Samantha. McAfee said the government raided his beachfront home and threatened Samantha's family.

"Fifteen armed soldiers come in and personally kidnap my housekeeper, threaten Sam's father with torture and haul away half a million dollars of my s***," claimed McAfee. "If they're not after me, then why all these raids? There've been eight raids!"

Before his arrest, McAfee said he would hold a press conference on Thursday in Guatemala City to announce his asylum bid. He has offered to answer questions from Belizean law enforcement over the phone, and denied any involvement in Faull's death.

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Chemical key to cell division revealed

In each of our cells, most of the genetic material is packaged safely within the nucleus, which is protected by a double membrane. The biochemistry behind how this membrane transforms when cells divide has finally been unravelled, offering insights that could provide new ways of fighting cancer and some rare genetic disorders.

During cell division, the membrane that surrounds the nucleus breaks down and reforms in the two daughter cells. Researchers have been split on the precise mechanisms that govern membrane reformation. One view is that proteins alone control the membrane's transformations. Another possibility is that changes in lipids – a vast group of fat-related compounds – are responsible.

Experiments had failed to show which of these two ideas was right, because it was difficult to alter lipid levels in specific compartments of cells without affecting other cellular processes.

Banafshe Larijani at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute and her colleagues have now overcome that hurdle. They came up with a technique that transforms a type of lipid called a diacylglycerol (DAG) into another lipid, within the nuclear membrane.

Chemical cascade

The technique involves inserting two fragments of DNA into the nucleus of a cell. This causes the cell to make two proteins: the first attaches itself to the nuclear membrane, the second floats around the cell. Adding a drug – rapalogue – to the mix causes the second protein to stick to the first, which in turn causes a chemical cascade that transforms the DAG into a different kind of lipid.

Crucially, they targeted a form of DAG that does not bind to proteins, so converting it into a different lipid does not affect any processes involving proteins in the cell.

The team tested the effect of this lipid manipulation on cell division in monkey and human cancer cells. The lower the level of DAG present in the nuclear membrane, the greater the membrane malformation and chance of cell death.

This demonstrates that lipids play a role in nuclear membrane reformation that does not depend on proteins.

Larijani says it "opens the door to finding ways to kill cancerous cells" by focusing on lipids that are important to the nuclear membrane's development.

Sausage pieces

As the nucleus divides, sausage-shaped fragments of its membrane float around the cell. The fragments have curved ends, and Larijani says that changes in lipid composition generate these curves, without which the fragments cannot reassemble correctly into new membranes.

More than a dozen rare genetic conditions such as Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, which is characterised by premature ageing in children, have been linked to irregularities in cell division. A better understanding of the way the nuclear membrane forms when cells divide could be key to treating these disorders.

The research also offers a new focus for preventing the irregular cell division that underlies many cancers.

"As a result of this work we now know with confidence that DAG plays a structural role in membrane dynamics," says Vytas Bankaitis, at the Texas A&M Health Science Center in College Station, who was not involved in the study. "If we could find a molecule with suitable characteristics, this manipulation could be done [in humans], which is something that has not really been considered before."

Journal reference: PLoS ONE DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051150

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Golf: Schwartzel takes early lead at Thailand championship

CHONBURI, Thailand: South Africa's Charl Schwartzel took an early lead at the Thailand Golf Championship with a seven-under-par 65 in the first round, energising his bid to avenge last year's second place to Lee Westwood.

The 2011 Masters champion hit seven birdies in steamy conditions at the Amata Spring course an hour outside Bangkok and hailed his fitness after a season dogged by injury.

"I'm just playing injury-free... that's allowing me to swing the club much better," he said, explaining his strong start to the Asian Tour event in which he came second last year to a rampant Westwood.

His form bodes well after a season where he has notched just two top 10 PGA Tour finishes, but the South African refused to get carried away with three days of golf in searing temperatures ahead.

"I played really well, I didn't miss many fairways... but you're not going to win after the first round, although you sure can lose it."

He took a one-shot clubhouse lead from home star Thitiphun Chuayprakong, with Spaniard Javi Colomo one more behind at five under.

Masters champion Bubba Watson, who had promised to showcase some of his famous buccaneering "Bubba Golf" in Thailand, carded a mixed round of four under.

It included a stirring run on the back nine of birdie, eagle, then birdie, which was undone by three bogeys in an error-strewn final six holes.

"It was a solid round but I made a few mistakes," said the lefthanded American.

"All of these guys are good players, it's the first day... it's going to be hot and we're going to have to stay focused," he said.

In a star-studded field American world number 25 Hunter Mahan was two under with five played, while defending champion Westwood - the highest ranked player at the event - had just started his round.

Westwood cruised to a seven-shot win at the inaugural event last year on the back of an opening round 12-under-par 60 - narrowly missing out on a magical 59, which has never been shot on the Asian Tour.

- AFP/de

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Apple returning to old stomping grounds for U.S.-made iMacs?

Some new iMacs, including the 21.5-inch iMac, are labeled as assembled in USA. Are they being made in Fremont, Calif.?

(Credit:
Apple)

Evidence suggests that Apple could be assembling some of the new iMacs in Fremont, Calif.

Two U.S. models that 9to5Mac traced originated in the San Jose area.

"One tipster's origination pickup point was briefly visible as Fremont CA so it would appear that
iMac assembly is happening in that general vicinity," the
Mac enthusiast site said.

Another possible location for an assembly operation would be Elk Grove, Calif., where Apple still has operations. But, so far, there's no hard evidence that units are being assembled there.

This follows images posted last week by iFixit showing "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in USA" markings on the back of an iMac.

Fremont, of course, is where Apple made Macs back in the day and where Steve Jobs built a factory to manufacture the NeXT Computer.

But that was a long time ago in an era when companies like Compaq, IBM, Texas Instruments (yes, it used to make laptops) and Gateway assembled and/or manufactured PCs and PC components in the U.S.

So, Apple returning some of its assembly work to the U.S. would be an unexpected turn of events considering that pretty much anything computer related these days is made in Asia.

That said, Fremont has never been a stranger to large manufacturers. General Motors and Toyota jointly built
cars there for years. That NUMMI factory was eventually taken over by Tesla Motors, which now builds its electric cars there.

Apple has yet to respond to a request for comment.

2012 iMac balances beauty with brawn

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A 2020 Rover Return to Mars?

NASA is so delighted with Curiosity's Mars mission that the agency wants to do it all again in 2020, with the possibility of identifying and storing some rocks for a future sample return to Earth.

The formal announcement, made at the American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting, represents a triumph for the NASA Mars program, which had fallen on hard times due to steep budget cuts. But NASA associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld said that the agency has the funds to build and operate a second Curiosity-style rover, largely because it has a lot of spare parts and an engineering and science team that knows how to develop a follow-on expedition.

"The new science rover builds off the tremendous success from Curiosity and will have new instruments," Grunsfeld said. Curiosity II is projected to cost $1.5 billion—compared with the $2.5 billion price tag for the rover now on Mars—and will require congressional approval.

While the 2020 rover will have the same one-ton chassis as Curiosity—and could use the same sky crane technology involved in the "seven minutes of terror"—it will have different instruments and, many hope, the capacity to cache a Mars rock for later pickup and delivery to researchers on Earth. Curiosity and the other Mars rovers, satellites, and probes have garnered substantial knowledge about the Red Planet in recent decades, but planetary scientists say no Mars-based investigations can be nearly as instructive as studying a sample in person here on Earth.

(Video: Mars Rover's "Seven Minutes of Terror.")

Return to Sender

That's why "sample return" has topped several comprehensive reviews of what NASA should focus on for the next decade regarding Mars.

"There is absolutely no doubt that this rover has the capability to collect and cache a suite of magnificent samples," said astronomer Steven Squyres, with Cornell University in New York, who led a "decadal survey" of what scientists want to see happen in the field of planetary science in the years ahead. "We have a proven system now for landing a substantial payload on Mars, and that's what we need to enable sample return."

The decision about whether the second rover will be able to collect and "cache" a sample will be up to a "science definition team" that will meet in the years ahead to weigh the pros and cons of focusing the rover's activity on that task.  

As currently imagined, bringing a rock sample back to Earth would require three missions: one to select, pick up, and store the sample; a second to pick it up and fly it into a Mars orbit; and a third to take it from Mars back to Earth.

"A sample return would rely on all the Mars missions before it," said Scott Hubbard, formerly NASA's "Mars Czar," who is now at Stanford University. "Finding the right rocks from the right areas, and then being able to get there, involves science and technology we've learned over the decades."

Renewed Interest

Clearly, Curiosity's success has changed the thinking about Mars exploration, said Hubbard. He was a vocal critic of the Obama Administration's decision earlier this year to cut back on the Mars program as part of agency belt-tightening but now is "delighted" by this renewed initiative.

(Explore an interactive time line of Mars exploration in National Geographic magazine.)

More than 50 million people watched NASA coverage of Curiosity's landing and cheered the rover's success, Hubbard said. If things had turned out differently with Curiosity, "we'd be having a very different conversation about the Mars program now."

(See "Curiosity Landing on Mars Greeted With Whoops and Tears of Jubilation.")

If Congress gives the green light, the 2020 rover would be the only $1 billion-plus "flagship" mission—NASA's largest and most expensive class of projects—in the agency's planetary division in the next decade. There are many other less ambitious projects to other planets, asteroids, moons, and comets in the works, but none are flagships. That has left some planetary scientists not involved with Mars unhappy with NASA's heavy Martian focus.

Future Plans

While the announcement of the 2020 rover mission set the Mars community abuzz, NASA also outlined a series of smaller missions that will precede it. The MAVEN spacecraft, set to launch next year, will study the Martian atmosphere in unprecedented detail; a lander planned for 2018 will study the Red Planet's crust and interior; and NASA will renew its promise to participate in a European life-detection mission in 2018. NASA had signed an agreement in 2009 to partner with the European Space Agency on that mission but had to back out earlier this year because of budget constraints.

NASA said that a request for proposals would go out soon, soliciting ideas about science instruments that might be on the rover. And as for a sample return system, at this stage all that's required is the ability to identify good samples, collect them, and then store them inside the rover.

"They can wait there on Mars for some time as we figure out how to pick them up," Squyres said. "After all, they're rocks."

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