There's one issue that's more politically divisive than gun control or abortion. That's the question of whether human activity is the primary driver of climate change. In a new poll, there was only one question pollsters asked that Democrats and Republicans were more likely to disagree about than the climate one: whether President Barack Obama is doing a good job.
We wrote about MAVEN the other day, but you might be wondering what's so great about yet another Mars orbiter. In short, the craft is taking a special orbit around Mars to sample many parts of the planet's upper atmosphere and learn more about the processes that are occurring there now. From that data, scientists will estimate what happened in Mars' past, billions of years ago, when scientists think the planet had large bodies of liquid water and a thick atmosphere. Both are now gone.
NASA's new budget is slated to land on Capitol Hill today, and it's not quite what the space agency was hoping for. US President Barack Obama is asking Congress for US$17.7 billion for NASA in 2013, funding it at its lowest level in four years and a full billion dollars less than the President mapped out for the agency in the five-year budget he sent Congress last year. Perhaps hardest hit: future Mars missions. The planetary science division will lose $300 million (down to $1.2 billion, or a 20 per cent cut), and Mars exploration will take the brunt of that reduction.
