Bolden said NASA's Mars research is the biggest part of the planetary science budget.
Mark Sykes is the director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
D. in Geochemistry in 1985 and a Masters in Planetary Science in 1981.
He hopes to have some Chemin and Sam results to report next month at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.
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"The Nasa programme is looking quite lop-sided at the moment" according to Professor Andrew Coates, the head of planetary science at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory.
Yet now that precision-pointing has been demonstrated, Landis says it opens up possibilities not just for planetary science, but for earth science and other astrophysics efforts.
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The event included several presentations about planetary science, during which several attendees had to sit on the floor or stand in order to fit in the lecture room.
Often, when you find an example of a kind of planet, you start seeing a lot of them, said Sara Seager, professor of planetary science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"We can go back in time and understand the conditions under which planets began to form, " said Thomas Prettyman, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.
Rover mission managers named the outcrop as a tribute to Mars scientist Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who served as a mission team member and taught planetary science at Arizona State University.
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Jim Green, director of Nasa's planetary science division in Washington DC, said the extended mission would allow the science community and the public to continue to share in "unlocking Saturn's secrets".
Balloon-based planetary science could potentially save NASA hundreds of millions of dollars when compared to the cost of analogous spacecraft, while offering almost Hubble Space Telescope-quality images and once-in-a-lifetime observing opportunities.
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The discovery would appear to resolve a longstanding mystery in planetary science: why the walnut-shaped Iapetus has a two-tone complexion, with one side of the moon significantly darker than the other.
For the first time in over four decades, NASA is planning to use the edge of our own stratosphere to initiate what it hopes will be a new balloon-based planetary science program.
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Nasa's budget for planetary science, and Mars research in particular, has been squeezed of late, forcing the Americans to pull back on their commitments to two European Red Planet ventures in 2016 and 2018.
This pending move back to planetary science from earth sub-orbit comes on the heels of improvements in pointing systems and instrument technologies that will allow ground-based controllers to fine-tune balloon payloads to include one-meter class optical and infrared telescopes.
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The resident mage is a student of astronomy and planetary science, so I decided the tower should have its own Foucault pendulum, attached to the 7th floor ceiling and swinging freely through open spaces in each floor below.
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The decreased allocation of funds to NASA programs was reported in the press as early as Feb. 13, lowering available funds for planetary science programs that support Mars exploration and missions to outer planets in the Solar System.
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The discovery of another moon around Pluto is exciting news for planetary science, but it's also likely causing some anxiety for the team in charge of New Horizons, a spacecraft set to be the first probe ever to visit the dwarf planet.
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"We have had very detailed mapping of that basin from images, from orbital spectral data, but we have not had high-resolution of its interior structure, " Grail's chief scientist, Prof Maria Zuber, who has been speaking at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas, told BBC News.
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The company, backed by several billionaires, is working to recruit engineering and mission-planning expertise and allow private companies to bid to help it launch the spacecraft, said John S. Lewis, a University of Arizona planetary-science professor who said he is an adviser to Planetary.
"You're going to actually get a chance to actually drive flight hardware on another planet, " said Bill Nye, a children's science show host on U.S. public television and a member of Planetary Society's board, who was also present for the announcement.
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