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NASA Bails Out of French-Led Mars Mission
(May 04 2003 04:45 GMT)

- Science (by Charlene Crabb): "France has never lacked ambition when it comes to space, but its efforts to forge its own path to Mars may now have suffered a mortal blow. Following budget cuts and restructuring at CNES, France's space agency, NASA has pulled out of the $350 million NetLander mission, a French-led collaboration to study the weather and subsurface geology of Mars. The timing of NASA's decision, communicated to CNES in a letter received last month, had planetary scientists wondering, at least initially, if the decision was influenced by differences between the United States and France over the war in Iraq. The political climate could have had 'an indirect effect,'.

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