Just six months after radically restructuring its space science programme to meet budget cuts, the European Space Agency (ESA) is facing the prospect of a further reduction in its science budget.

If implemented, the number of science missions could fall by almost two-thirds between now and 2010. The agency's space science advisory committee (SSAC) warned last month of disastrous consequences for space science if the cuts are made in full. However, ESA's more senior space programme committee (SPC) was more cautious.

European space ministers are due to review ESA's budget next June. At their previous meeting in 1995, held in Toulouse, they agreed to a 3% annual cut in ESA's space science budget for three years with a possible two year extension. Earlier this year, ESA's science director, Roger Bonnet, restructured the programme assuming that level funding would be restored for these two years followed by an annual increase of 5% for the next five years. Bonnet's assumptions, however, now look optimistic.

Last month, the agency presented five financial scenarios. The worst assumes an extension to the 3% annual cut for a further two years and level funding thereafter. Five rather than 14 missions would be launched between now and 2010.

The SSAC said this would be catastrophic for European space science. But the members of the SPC were divided. They issued a cautiously worded statement endorsing Bonnet's science programme. "We must impress [on the space ministers] not to touch further this backbone of the agency because it might collapse, " says Hans Balsiger of Bern University, who chairs the SPC.

Other SPC members, however, were less outraged. "I have difficulty with the word catastrophe - I have heard it too often, " says Gernot Hartmann, a German delegate to the SPC.

Meanwhile, ESA has approved further studies of the Mars Express mission. Set to launch in 2003, Mars Express will have a series of instruments to observe the red planet, plus a lander containing a minitiarized drill to take samples below the oxdized top soil layer.

The Mars Express team now has six months to come up with a design for a lander and cost it. If it launches on time, the lander would provide surface analysis two years before NASA's next Mars mission. National space agencies are expected to fund the lander while ESA provides funds for communications and launching the probe. Other space scientists are getting concerned that the Mars mission might divert funds away from their programs such as the Far Infrared Space Telescope (FIRST), or the Planck mission to study the cosmic microwave background. In a cost cutting exercise both projects have been recently combined into one mission.