Mars

Lean financial times are prompting belt-tightening far and wide -- and now that extends to Mars and the rest of the solar system.

President Barack Obama's proposed budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for fiscal year 2013 would eliminate $300 million from the agency's planetary sciences division, a 20 percent cut from the $1.5 billion it received for 2012. Though the budget plan, released last week, would preserve funding for high-profile projects like the James Webb Space Telescope and manned space missions, scientists were alarmed by the hit to relatively inexpensive programs that explore the solar system with high-tech robots.

MOSCOW -- Pale but smiling, an international crew of researchers on Friday walked out of a set of windowless modules after a grueling 520-day simulation of a flight to Mars.

The all-male crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese slowly emerged from the western Moscow facility, which simulated the confinement, stress and fatigue of interplanetary travel -- minus the weightlessness. Dressed in blue track suits emblazoned with the mission emblem, they carefully walked down a metal ladder to a greeting crowd of officials and journalists.

WASHINGTON -- Arizona researchers announced "the best evidence to date of liquid water on Mars," saying photos from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest more than 1,000 dark flows of briny water near the Martian equator.