Scientists at NASA plan to put one of the twin Mars rovers to sleep and limit the activities of the other robot to fulfill a NASA order to cut $4 million from the program's budget, mission team members said Monday.

The project, which was originally supposed to run for three months, is now in its fourth year, successfully exploring the terrain of Mars. It costs NASA about $20 million to keep the project going, but due to budget cuts, the space agency is forced to put its child up for adoption, so to speak. As of yet, no billionaire has stepped up to the plate, but I am hoping that someone will soon.

For the cost of a few of your average modern missiles, we are abandoning a program that has been one of NASA's most visible and productive projects.

In a country where politicians and industry titans alike speak about the need to invigorate U.S.'s leadership in the fields of science and engineering, this program provided a major vehicle (pun intended) toward stimulating interest, while bringing precious information to active scientists.

Perhaps naming rights could be sold to a major corporate sponsor. It seems to me that Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) or Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) might have an interest in helping out. They make hundreds of millions of dollars from the various missile programs. Only today, Raytheon Technical Services Company LLC, a subsidiary of Raytheon, has received a $56.9 million contract extension to support facilities and operations for astronaut training at two NASA facilities.

There are so few federal programs that actually can claim any return on investment. To cut this one is tragic and foolish given the three trillion dollar federal budget recently submitted to congress .

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares in RTN or LMT.