NASA (along with many other government agencies) are facing tighter budgets than they had hoped for. The space agency requested a 7% increased budget, but instead was given a 2% budget cut. This still leaves them with $24.8 billion, but that doesn’t go as one might think.

The agency has announced some layoffs and other cuts, which are seen as necessary. One area where they are reducing their budget, however, is getting them a lot of bad press (and its easy to see why).

The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) rover was supposed to go to the moon to gather important new information.

It had already been built and delivered to NASA.

Most importantly, it has already been paid for to the tune of $450 million.

NASA still had to run it through a series of tests to make sure it was ready to go. Any issues that were found during testing would also have to be fixed.

These things cost money and when combined with the money already spent for the rover, it was decided that they could not afford it.

The NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration, Joel Kearns, gave a presentation where he talked about the decision.

“This is a tough and disappointing decision — we all know that — which we had to make in an uncertain and constrained budget environment. But we do believe that this is the way for us to continue to support a portfolio of lunar science and our dedication to studying the Moon.”

What is perhaps most frustrating to both scientists and regular citizens is that the lunar lander that was slated to take VIPER to the moon is still going as it has other important missions to conduct.

The lunar lander can’t just go on the mission with 950 pounds less weight (what VIPER weighed). So NASA will be replacing it with a mass simulator.

That might sound like something interesting, but it is not. It is just any object that weighs the amount that is needed for a particular mission, in this case, 950 pounds.

So, they may be sending up 950 pounds of unneeded metal, or other materials, just to get the weight up to the level it is needed.

Some scientists are so upset by this decision that they have penned an open letter to congress asking them to step in and prevent NASA from this type of waste.

Sometimes the amount of wasteful spending by NASA is out of this world.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.