After five years of discussions and negotiations with the
German space agency DLR, AMSAT-DL reports that the agency has withdrawn its
support for the amateur satellite organization's plan to send a ham radio satellite
to Mars, the so-called "P5" satellite. According to the AMSAT News
Service, the agency advised the group that P5's mission was financially
infeasible and that "the scientific attraction was, compared with the
current Mars missions, insufficient."
"Obviously, our P5 mission is now compared with regular
missions which cost hundreds of millions of Euro," said the AMSAT-DL board
in a statement. The decision also affects plans for a geostationary
Earth-orbiting satellite (P3E), which was to be part of the overall P5 program.
AMSAT-DL officials are not giving up hope, though, noting that the group
"recently had some interesting meetings in China and if we can't do rocket
science in (Germany), we have to look for other countries."