On the bright side, tests this month indicate that workable designs have finally been developed for the rovers' parachutes and impact airbags -- although the landing system's vulnerability to horizontal winds still remains a rather serious problem, and may force rejection of two scientifically interesting possible landing sites in Isidis Basin and the floor of Gusev Crater.

And both houses made moderate cuts in two new technology programs ardently pushed by NASA and the White House for future Solar System exploration.

These included a request for $79 million towards the "Nuclear Power Program" to develop new and much more efficient generators to convert the heat from plutonium-238 into electrical power for outer Solar System probes that can't use solar power, thus cutting the necessary amount of this expensive and dangerous fuel to only a small fraction of what it now is. But the Senate cut $9 million from this, and the House cut $7 million.

NASA had also requested $46.5 million for a "Nuclear Electric Propulsion" program to develop a radical new system in which a miniature nuclear reactor would power a space probe's ion engines, providing a huge new supply of propulsive power for outer Solar System probes that cannot use solar-powered ion engines, and thus vastly increasing their capabilities.

But despite the Bush White House's enthusiasm for this program, the Senate cut $4 million from it, and the House fully $10 million -- making it clear that, while they think it has value, they also don't think it is nearly as urgent as NASA said. (The big difference between the size of these two NEP program cuts must be resolved in the House-Senate negotiations.)

The House ended up adding $100 million more to NASA's budget than the Senate did. Besides the money for Europa and Mars, this comes mostly from a large House increase in the money given to various earmarks and specialized programs in aerospace technology development -- although the House tries to pay for some of these by rejecting much of the money the Senate earmarked for increases in NASA's academic programs.

It's uncertain how this will all work out in the House-Senate negotiations, especially since the House has tried to pay for its total increase in NASA funding through a controversial cancellation of the proposed "Americorps" domestic volunteer program and by some cuts in low-income housing, which the Senate may well reject.

Neither branch made any changes whatsoever in NASA's spending on "Human Spaceflight", including the Space Station and the Shuttle, despite the fact that the Station's continuing massive cost overruns are the central problem for NASA at the moment.

This is simply because everyone is waiting for NASA to release its new plan for the completion of the Station in December -- which may or may not expand it beyond the "Core Complete" stage in which it can maintain a permanent crew of only three, despite the fact that the "ReMaP" scientific task force appointed by NASA reported in July that this will be hopelessly inadequate to do the research work for which the Station was intended.

NASA is dropping strong hints that the Station will indeed be expanded beyond that point, perhaps to allow its originally planned permanent 7-man crew. But while NASA's Fiscal Year 2004 budget request, which incorporates whatever new plans the agency has for the Station, was sent to the Office of Management and Budget last month, it will not be publicly released until next spring.

Nor has the agency yet revealed how it intends to deal with the clear need to upgrade the Shuttle fleet to increase their safety -- a fact which both houses of Congress complained about forcefully in their appropriations statements.

The Senate VA/HUD subcommittee that funds NASA stated that "there is no higher priority than improving the safety of the Shuttle orbiters", but that "current budget projections for the Shuttle are inadequate to accommodate significant safety upgrades, infrastructure upgrades and maintenance of critical workforce skills over the long term."

It therefore ordered NASA Administrator O'Keefe to include in the agency's FY 2004 budget "a thorough assessment of...costs that would be needed to maintain and improve Shuttle safety over the [vehicles'] expected operational life."

The House VA/HUD subcommittee was, if anything, more forceful: "It is with deep regret that the Committee notes that, once again, major safety upgrades funded in prior years' budgets have been cancelled due to technological obstacles or cost constraints.

"The Committee is frustrated that NASA cannot seem to accurately evaluate the risks... and the cost of those components. The Committee directs NASA to undertake a serious evaluation of the process by which safety upgrades and proposed and approved, only to be cancelled or deferred less than one year later."

Administrator O'Keefe has indicated both that this problem will be dealt with, and that NASA also probably will begin the process of expanding the Station beyond its 3-man crew configuration.

But where will it get the money? In recent weeks, rumors have begun to fly that it may do so by radically scaling down its huge Space Launch Initiative ("SLI") program to develop a successor vehicle to the Shuttle that would be fully 10 times safer and 10 times cheaper to launch.

NASA requested fully $759 million for this effort in its FY 2003 budget, and was scheduled to officially report its desired specifications for the vehicle in November -- including crew size, payload capacity, and the three finalists out of the original set of 15 proposed vehicle designs provided by industry.

But an Oct. 3 report from the General Accounting Office says that NASA is nowhere near being able to firmly set these requirements yet, and that indeed it is possible that the SLI project should be postponed "altogether, indefinitely, until there is a major breakthrough in technology that could vastly improve performance and reduce costs. This decision will be difficult, given the uncertainties about the availability" of these technologies.

Therefore, according to the "Space.com" aerospace news website, rumors are now flying that NASA will indeed radically postpone the SLI project and cut spending on it next year by as much as several hundred million dollars -- thus freeing up a giant new treasure chest of funds that could be used both for the needed Shuttle safety upgrades, and to fund the 7-man emergency Crew Rescue Vehicle and the Habitation Module that are necessary for the Station to be fully manned.

The Senate committee has already cut $30 million from the FY 2003 funding for SLI, and the House has cut $31 million -- but neither house has made any further changes because, once again, everyone is waiting for NASA and the White House to drop the other shoe and reach their own conclusions as to what should be done about these huge sectors of NASA spending. By the end of the year, we should know.

Finally, the House made one other interesting change that the Senate has not yet gone along with, involving the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble has undergone five spectacularly successful servicing visits by Shuttle crews to provide it with new kinds of instruments and repair various problems with it -- some of them very serious, and a few involving successful repairs to major systems that weren't even originally designed for in-space repair.

But only one more reservicing visit is set, in 2004. Since Hubble's cheaper but much more powerful infrared successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (formerly called the "Next Generation Space Telescope") was set for launch in 2008, it wasn't thought worthwhile to do any more Hubble repairs or renovations after that -- the telescope would simply be operated until it finally suffered enough accumulating problems to be useless.

Since it weighs 11 metric tons and has no propulsion system to allow its reentry to be safely targeted over the ocean, one final Shuttle visit in 2010 or later would retrieve it and return it to Earth (presumably to end up in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum).

But the Webb Telescope has suffered some delays and now isn't set to fly until 2010. And so the House is concerned over the possibility that Hubble may break down before the Webb Telescope is launched and thus create an interruption in the continuing data flow that "may not sustain a productive scientific community."

It has thus ordered NASA to study the possibility of adding one final Hubble-servicing Shuttle mission in 2007 -- or, as an alternative, cancelling the final 2010 mission to return Hubble, and instead augmenting the 2007 repair mission with a small retrorocket module that would be attached to Hubble's aft end so that the Telescope could finally be steered to a safe targeted fiery reentry when its useful life was over.

(That latter course would probably be cheaper, but it remains uncertain whether the additional years of scientific return provided by that final Hubble repair flight would outweigh the cost of building the new retromodule.)

There's a good chance, however, that the Senate will go along in ordering NASA to at least sensibly study the question -- and perhaps also go along with the $7.5 million the House added to NASA's 2003 budget for a new, lightweight pallet to allow Hubble to be carried in the Shuttle's cargo bay.

At any rate, both houses of Congress are at least showing a lively interest in questions of space science -- arguably, a livelier and better thought-out interest in it than either NASA Headquarters itself or the White House have shown this year.

Neither house will actually vote on this year's NASA appropriation -- let alone revolve their differences -- until after the November election. But even if such possible new items as Europa Orbiter and an additional Hubble repair mission end up not being funded this year, they might also benefit from the possible scaleback of the Space Launch Initiative effort and so be funded next year.

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