Most employees working on NASA's canceled lunar rover stay at the agency

Over 95% of employees working on NASA's canceled lunar rover are working for the space agency, NASA officials said on Friday

. , called Resource Prospector, was abruptly canceled in April, just a few years before it was projected on the moon looking for water. The decision has stunned scientists and researchers, especially considering President Donald Trump's recent decision to send Americans back to the moon as a springboard for March

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The Space Agency announced that it will rely on commercial companies for future robotic missions on the lunar surface – missions that will use parts of the canceled rover, like its ice drill, a hydrogen search system below the lunar surface, and a tool to quantify the water extracted from the moon. But this decision was made only when the agency spent more than four years and nearly half of the project's $ 250 million budget

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cancellation, there were 90 officials and contractors working on the rover of $ 250 million. They worked mainly in three NASA centers: Johnson Space Center in Houston, Ames Research Center in California and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Two months later, 86 of these workers are still at the agency, said spokeswoman Cheryl Warner. These people are currently working on projects such as the International Space Station, the March 2020 rover and the mini-space station orbiting the moon proposed in the Trump Budget in 2019.

'reassigned'

Of the four people who were no longer working for the agency, Warner said that three of them had decided to leave NASA for other opportunities and that the company was not there. one of them had decided to retire. environment for the Houston Chronicle. You can reach her at [email protected] or Twitter.com/alexdstuckey.