One day after the media reported that one of NASA’s Mars rovers will end its mission due to budget cuts for the remaining months of the 2008 fiscal year, NASA denied the rumors. James Green, head of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, initially sent a letter last week to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena announcing the budget cuts, including a $4 million reduction for the Mars mission.

“All elements of the Mars Exploration Program will operate under their previous program guidance as if the letter was never sent,” said NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown in a statement. Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, said on Tuesday that under no circumstances will any of Mars Exploration Rovers’ missions be canceled.

Steve Squires, MER principal investigator at Cornell University, said earlier this week that the budget cut is likely to shut down one of the rovers, most probably Spirit, but none of the NASA representatives confirmed that information.

According to the Associated Press, “Dr. Griffin did not know beforehand that Dr. Green sent the letter, nor did Dr. Green obtain explicit approval from Dr. Griffin to send the letter,” said NASA spokesman Dwayne Brown. Dr. Green was not available for comments.

If NASA is indeed forced to undergo such budget cuts, the Mars Exploration Rovers program will reportedly suffer a $4 million shortage, and if the agency isn’t planning on shutting down one of the rovers, it will need to rearrange its budget so that the $20 million needed every year for the Mars mission to still be available.

It is a matter of money over science as it seems. The two rovers landed on Mars in January 2004 and were supposed to be there for just 90 days, in an $820 million mission. NASA decided their mission needs to continue, and the two rovers remained on the red planet to this date.