The Canadian Space Agency is in early talks to launch a rover beyond Earth orbit aboard NASA's huge new deep space rocket, according to a senior Canadian official.

Canada recently unveiled seven rover prototypes that cost a total of $60 million. Some of the rovers have been field-tested with NASA and impressed officials with the U.S. space agency, according to the CSA's Gilles Leclerc.

As such, Leclerc said NASA is considering flying a rover on an early flight of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which is slated to become operational in the early 2020s. However, he allowed the discussions are preliminary given the upcoming U.S. presidential election and uncertainty about future NASA funding.

"I don't want to speak for NASA it is touchy but there are opportunities for missions around the moon or on the moon," said Leclerc, the CSA's director-general of space exploration. "You can certainly envisage automatic robotic missions to the moon." [Photos: NASA's Space Launch System]

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Humanity has long dreamed of putting boots on Mars, but those boots have the potential to stomp all over any lifeforms that may exist on the Red Planet.

The SLS has two publicly disclosed missions on the roster: a flight in 2017 to send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit, and another potential flight in 2021 to take a crew beyond the moon. Any SLS flight beyond those two missions will require further study.

"NASA does not have plans for either (mission) to land on a foreign surface," NASA spokeswoman Rachel Kraft told Space.com via email.

"As we continue to define future mission requirements, NASA anticipates that we will continue to engage in co-operative activities with CSA involving Canadian rovers and associated technologies," Kraft wrote in a follow-up statement.

Falling funds The CSA is facing a 20 percent budget cut to $310 million, or U.S. $315 million in the coming year, as well as overall uncertainty about government spending priorities. Canada is currently undertaking a review of government aerospace programs, with a report expected to be submitted to the government late in 2012.

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