The president of the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES), Yannick d'Escatha, said the 2002 deficit had been reduced to 35 million euros thanks to operational savings and by rescheduling some expenditures to 2003.

As part of the cuts, the CNES would scrap French participation in Netlander, in which a US-European consortium plans to send four landers to Mars in 2007 to map its terrain and weather system.

The other countries taking part in Netlander are the United States, through its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), as well as Finland, Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.

It would also abandon participation in Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), a tool for studying black holes, D'Escatha said. The other participants in GLAST are NASA and institutions in Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden.

CNES will also freeze plans to place experiments onboard the International Space Station (ISS), which is facing transport problems because of the Columbia shuttle disaster.

D'Escatha was appointed to the CNES in February after the agency's management was criticised by a panel of experts as being weak and unfocussed.

He added on Wednesday that the agency had borrowed money from the defence ministry and research ministries, which oversee it, to fill the 35-million-euro deficit. The loan would be reimbursed over the next three years.

The CNES is a state agency tasked with defining and carrying out France's space programme. It notably plays a preponderant role in the European Space Agency (ESA).

SPACE.WIRE