Thoughts on the Selection of MSL-2020

Much has been written about the announcement that NASA will launch a second Mars Science Laboratory to Mars in 2020.  Reactions have ranged from ecstatic to dumb founded depending on where another Mars rover mission fits in each poster's priorities.

One criticism of the decision has been that NASA has made it clear that caching samples for eventual return to Earth is a possibility, but one that will compete with other scientific opportunities.  There will be only so many dollars and so much mass and volume available for the science payload.  The Decadal Survey report, however, made it clear that another Mars rover was a priority only if that rover the caching element of a series of missions to return samples.

However, it appears that the President's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also has made it clear that they will not support sample return with its $6-8B price tag.  As one report put it, the James Webb Telescope's cost overruns have soured OMB on multi-billion dollars space ventures.  In other words, the Decadal Survey's number one priority didn't get the sale.  OMB appears to be okay with Mars missions in general, so long as they are no more than modestly expensive.  In fact, Mars offers advantages as a destination -- short flight times, lots of developed technology, good science, proven public appeal.  (My prediction: sample return will occur only if a rover finds organic pay dirt that strongly hints at life, present or past.)

Why didn't NASA turn to the second ranked priority, a Europa mission?  We don't know, but I'll speculate.  The latest, many flyby version of the mission has been costed to approximately $2B, approximately half the cost estimate of an orbiter mission from a few years ago.  I believe that that cost doesn't include the launch, which would add another 10% or more, taking the total cost to more than $700M greater than the cost of MSL-2020 with launch.  NASA's planetary program simply doesn't have the funding for the current version of the Europa mission (or the third priority, a Uranus orbiter).  (When asked when a Europa mission will fly, the head of NASA's science program said that the cost would have to come down to the range of MSL-2020 (presumably including the launch)).

Another option would have been to use the money for MSL-2020 for a New Frontiers mission and a Discovery mission, which would cost approximately the same amount (some additional funding probably would be needed for the launches).  Here, I believe that NASA faced a strategic management decision.  JPL is a unique asset for planetary exploration.  It needs a large mission to keep its skills current and its workforce engaged.  (If you're good enough to work at JPL, lots of businesses would like your resume.)  JPL might or might not win the competitions for the New Frontiers and Discovery mission and the winning missions might not technically challenge JPL.

So, MSL-2020 fits the budget envelope, gives JPL a major project, and will do good science (if not necessarily the top ranked science from the Decadal Survey).  In my former career as a strategic planner for a large high tech company, I think I would have advocated for the same decision in an era of declining budgets.  As a private citizen, I would have preferred to see the Europa mission fly, but MSL-2020 is a good consolation prize.

The announcement left some key questions open.  First, what is the budget for developing the payload for MSL-2020?  Technology advances since Curiosity's instrument selection means that some awesome options are in development.  Taking them to flight readiness, though, may require a substantial budget.  Working in a lab as a breadboard is one thing.  Guaranteed reliability on the surface of Mars within a tight mass and volume constraint is another.

The answer to that first question will help the mission's science definition team tackle the second question: What are the scientific priorities for the mission?  Take proven instruments to a new location?  Deliver next generation instruments?  Cache samples?  I suspect that it may be a combination of the three.  One possibility might be to refly some of the ExoMars instruments (which have the added benefit that they are not paid for by NASA).  I'd personally like to see the ExoMars deep drill flown to get samples from well below the surface at a second site to a sophisticated instrument suite.

Then there is the question of what follows MSL-2020?  This new rover fits within the budget cap only because JPL has a substantial supply of flight ready spares.  Those won't be available for a third MSL.  Does NASA fly additional missions to Mars in the 2020's or turn its attention elsewhere?  Those decisions will need to be made well before the next Decadal Survey is due around 2022.

And finally, what about the rest of the solar system?  By my reading of NASA's projected planetary budgets, MSL-2020 consumes most of the budget once the Mars MAVEN orbiter and InSight landers and the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return missions launch.  Without a budget increase, follow on New Frontiers and Discovery missions to other targets may be few and far between.  I hope that Congress' proposals to increase the planetary budget by $100-150M over OMB's last budget proposal to Congress occur.  That small amount per year could breathe new life into these smaller mission programs.

 I have found other good commentary (not all of which I agree with, but it's well reasoned and written) on NASA's decision at the following blogs: Vintage Space,

NASA’s Plan for Mars Makes the Old New Again; Planetary Society,

The 2020 Rover in Context and Rovers are awesome, but where's the science?

 

Mars Science Laboratory 2

The first week of December every year, I need to decide between attending two conferences, a forest ecology conference and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference.  This year, I chose the latter, which was right for my current professional work, but wrong for my advocation, future planetary exploration planning.  At AGU this year, NASA announced that it will fly a second Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) rover to Mars.

My conference and a deadline for getting a draft of manuscript for a paper to co-authors has left me with little time this week.  Phil Horzempa has stepped in with his account NASA's announcement. 

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 On December 4, 2012, NASA announced that they would launch an MSL-class rover to Mars in 2020.  This decision helps to put some clarity in NASA's Mars Exploration Program after years of uncertainty.  Van has covered some of that turmoil in earlier posts.   

Now that the dust has settled, we can look forward to two new exciting Mars rover missions in the coming decade: ESA's ExoMars 2018 rover and NASA's MSL-2.  Perhaps the split was unavoidable.  To constrain costs, ESA and NASA tried several options to conduct a joint rover mission.  One mission plan was to deliver two rovers (one from each agency) to the same landing site using a modified MSL-1 Skycrane.  The latest incarnation called for one, joint-effort, rover to be delivered to the surface of Mars via the Skycrane.  It seems, however, that the rover may have been more of a European creation since ESA's ExoMars rover was so far along in its development cycle.  This would have meant that JPL's rover team would have little to do for the foreseeable future.  Its expertise has been honed over a decade of Mars missions.   One can conjecture as to why NASA withdrew from cooperation with ESA for the ExoMars rover.  One possibility is that, in return for a large investment of funds, NASA was not going to be able to maintain the team of artisans at JPL who designed and built MSL-1.  They are a national asset.  So, in the end, perhaps the Mars community is better off with this split.  Instead of two rovers, or only one rover, at one site, there will now be two capable rovers exploring two separate sites on Mars. 

A recurrent plea in the planetary community has been for the re-use of common spacecraft, i.e., don't keep re-inventing the wheel.  It is heartening to see that NASA seems to have accepted this idea, at least for now.  Earlier this year, NASA chose the InSight Mars geophysics mission that will re-use the Phoenix lander design.  A lot of effort went into transforming the Mars 2001 Lander into a robust, well-tested soft lander.  That system is now ready to host Discovery-class payloads.  Several ideas were presented at the Mars Concepts Workshop in June.   The Phoenix spacecraft bus is a low-cost means of getting to Mars' surface and we may see it used several times in the coming decades.

 

MSL-2 not only will benefit from existing designs and testing but also from a supply of flight ready spares built for MSL-1, Curiosity.

This week, NASA chose to fly what is essentially MSL-2.  NASA's chief of the unmanned Science
Directorate, John Grunsfeld, spoke about the decision at this week's AGU meeting.  Apparently, this step has been cleared by the President’s Office of Management and Budget, which approves NASA’s budget proposals

This mission will re-use the aspects of MSL-1 that took much effort to design, develop and test.  These include the large heat shield, the large parachute, the guided entry system, the Skycrane, the MMRTG, and the actuators that caused so much consternation.  Instead of being abandoned, these technologies will be used again.  Therein lies much of the logic behind the reduced cost of MSL-2.  In addition, the JPL team will get to apply lessons-learned from their effort to build MSL-1. 

There has been talk of a solar option for MSL-2.  However, part of the cost savings for MSL-2 means taking advantage of the engineering that has already been done for MSL-1, including the use of an MMRTG.  If a solar option were pursued, then a lot of systems engineering would need to be re-done.  For instance, MSL-1 utilizes the heat from its RTG to warm its electronics during the bitter cold of Martian nights.   For the lowest cost and highest performance, the MMRTG is the best option. 

In fact, there appear to be a number of flight-qualified spares from MSL-1, including an MMRTG, which could be used in MSL-2.  The backup MMRTG seems to have been Pu-238 fueled already.  If true, then that would provide some answer as to the availability of Pu-238 for this mission.  How that fuel would be utilized is still to be determined since there will be a good amount of radioactive decay over the next 8 years before launch.  It may need to be “mixed” with fresh Pu-238. 

The subject of parts obsolescence will be addressed early on.  There are probably parts vendors that either have gone out of business, or who no longer manufacture a given part. 

As to whether this mission could be moved up to 2018 with enough funding, there are other  considerations.  Mainly, 2018 is not that far away and it would be a tight squeeze trying to get the instruments built and tested by then.  A launch in 2020 actually allows a greater variety of instruments to be considered for MSL-2's payload. 

The launch window in 2020 is more favorable than the 2011 window used by MSL-1.  This opens up more of the Martian surface to landing site possibilities.  

A Science Definition Team will be assigned soon to define goals for the mission.  In addition, an Announcement of Opportunity for the instruments should be released this coming summer.  Caching samples for Mars Sample Return is open for debate.  Scientists could decide that resources on MSL-2 would be better utilized for in-situ studies. 

Associate Administrator Grunsfeld pointed out that Mars exploration presents an opportunity for synergy between NASA's manned and unmanned flight programs.  He pointed out President Obama's challenge to fly a manned orbital mission to Mars in the 2030s.   What this means for the MSL-2 mission is anybody's guess since he did not go into detail.  However, the involvement of the agency's manned flight effort could provide some funding support.  It could also mean that some of the payload would be aimed at providing data for future manned missions to the Red Planet.  We already see this with the RAD instrument on board MSL-1. 

Dr. Grunsfled mentioned that they could have flown a 2018 mission instead of the 2020 MSL-2, but, because of the budget, it would have been a down-scaled orbiter.  They decided to wait 2 years to get a surface mission.   The estimated cost of $1.5 Billion for MSL-2 includes a launch vehicle.

With reference to other aspects of NASA's unmanned Science program, he indicated that NASA will continue to try to do a Europa mission.  Costs are getting almost low enough for a new start, but they are not quite there yet.  Van has written several posts reviewing the efforts to design lower-cost Europa missions. 

So, we now know the plan for NASA's Mars exploration over the coming decade.  One of the remaining questions concerns the landing site for MSL-2.  My vote is for a landing in, or near, Mariner Valley.  It would allow for spectacular views and science.  

ESA Extends Its Mars Planning, But…

Buried among the major announcements from the recently concluded ministerial meeting were other decisions that may impact planetary exploration in the coming decade.  I discussed the two most prominent of these decisions relevant to planetary exploration in my last post; ESA approved the ExoMars joint implementation agreement with Russia, and decided not to proceed with a German-backed lunar lander.

Buried in the news were two other items, one positive for planetary exploration the other not.

I’ll start with the positive news.  ESA has viewed the ExoMars orbiter and rover missions as the first two missions in what would be a continuing set of missions to explore Mars.  The space agency has investigated a number of possible missions for the first half of the 2020’s.  Two missions could have been ESA’s contribution to a joint Mars sample return mission with NASA: a precision lander with a rover to fetch cached samples and/or an orbiter to collect the samples delivered to Martian orbit and bring them back to Earth.    With the delay (potentially indefinite) of NASA’s contributions to a sample return, ESA has shelved these two concepts.

Two other concepts were approved for continued study by ESA for potential launch in 2022 and/or 2024.  The Inspire geophysical network mission would deliver 3 landers to Mars with a seismometer, a weather station, heat flow probe, and possibly other instruments.  (Details have not been released, likely because the concepts appear to be in the earliest planning stages.)  This network of stations would build on the single station geophysical NASA InSight mission (2016) and the Russian geophysical station planned to accompany the ExoMars rover (2018).  If either of these stations still operates if and when the Inspire stations arrive, they would add additional nodes to the network.

 

Inspire mission concept.  Click on image for a larger version.

The second mission concept would be for a Phobos sample return mission called Phootprint.  Returning a sample of Phobos, which may be accumulated rubble left from the formation of Mars or rubble blasted off the planet by asteroid strikes, is a worthy scientific goal in its own right.  Russia attempted a similar mission, and American scientists have proposed their own equivalent missions several times for the Discovery program.  In addition to the scientific goals, the mission would also develop much of the hardware needed for the eventual Mars sample return orbiter.

 

Phootprint mission concept.  Click on image for a larger version. 

 

The decision at the Ministerial mission was to proceed with mission studies to better define the concepts and prepare them to enter development.  At the next Ministerial meeting planned for 2015, ESA’s managers plan to seek approval to begin development on one or both of the missions.

The less positive news for ESA’s science program was that the ministers decided to freeze its budget for the next several years (after a small bump from the contributions of two new ESA members).  Inflation will rob the science program of its purchasing power each year at a projected rate of 2-3% per year.  One news article quoted and ESA science manager as saying that among the options may be to delay to cancel a mission.  Typically, agencies push budget cuts onto the missions least far along in selection or development.  If ESA does this, then either its next medium mission selection may be delayed or the JUICE Jupiter-Ganymede mission may be pushed out.

The ExoMars mission may also impact the science budget.  ESA has only one mandatory program, the science program.  Other programs, such as the one that funds ExoMars and possibly Inspire and Phootprint, are optional programs.  To date, not enough funds have been committed to implement the ExoMars missions.  As a result, ESA management is looking at possible contributions the science program could make.  One idea is to have Russia supply the JUICE launcher.  That would save the science program money late in this decade, but the ExoMars program needs funding mid-decade.  Another idea is for the science program to directly fund a portion of the ExoMars missions, which would conduct excellent science.  With that flat budget, though, the potential for ripple effects to other science missions such as JUICE seem possible.

You can download the presentation where I found the slides above from here.

Moonlander Nein, ExoMars Si

My apologies for the paucity of posts recently.  The cause has been a lack of news recently and a number of commitments for my research projects.   Posts are likely to be scarce through the end of the year, but I have at least three more planned so check back every week or so if you don't use a news reader.

This week, however, there is news.  The European Space Agency is holding its once every four year ministerial meeting to decide on budgets and policy for the next four years.  Much of the discussion will revolve around future launchers and manned spaceflight plans.  Two decisions have been made, however, that will impact future planetary exploration.

As I wrote last July, Germany has been promoting a mission that would put a lander near the south pole of the moon.  Unfortunately, Germany was unable to obtain commitments for the program from other ESA nations and has dropped the project. (See this SpaceNews article for more details.)

ESA's ExoMars mission (with Italy as a major backer) has fared better.  ESA formally approved the cooperative program with the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.  In return for participating in both the 2016 orbiter mission and the 2018 lander and rover mission, Russia will provide launchers for both missions and the descent and landing system for the 2018 mission.  These contributions put the mission's costs for ESA -- expected to be 1.2B Euros not including the costs of instruments borne by individual nations -- within reach of its budget.  ESA's managers still haven't found all the funds needed to close the gap between the 850M Euros already committed and the total bill.  Various plans are being pursued to close the gap, and the final closure on whether or not the missions will be possible will not come until next year.  (This SpaceNews article has more details on the funding issues.)

 

 Russian contributions to the ExoMars orbiter and rover would significantly enhance both missions.  As an example, a Russian epithermal neutron detector (right) would have ten times higher resolution than a similar instrument on NASA's Odyssey orbiter (left), allowing for higher resolution maps of near surface ice.

In the meantime, more information has become available on Russia's plans for a stationary geophysical station that will be built into the lander that will deliver to rover to the surface.  (In a previous post, I described the instruments Russia will provide for the orbiter and rover.) 

 

Proposed configuration for the 2018 ExoMars lander and rover.  Once the rover leaves the lander, the station's instruments would conduct long term monitoring.

In Europe's original plan for ExoMars included a highly capable stationary lander, named Humboldt, to patiently monitor conditions below, surrounding, and above the landing site.  Its ten instruments were to include a seismometer, a weather station, a heat flow probe, and dust monitors.  (See this post for a chart listing the proposed instruments.)  The Humboldt package was eliminated as part of early budget cuts to reduce mission costs.

Plans for the Russian stationary lander could fulfill the original goals of the Humboldt station.  The new plans would expand on the Humboldt goals with instruments to monitor atmospheric chemistry, presumably to look for changes in transient trace gases such as methane that would indicate geological or biological activity.

 

Preliminary instrument list for the stationary lander.  Double click on the image for a larger version.

If the ExoMars lander and rover fly in 2018, there would be a good chance that NASA's InSight geophysical station would still be operating.  Then we would have two seismometers operating on the surface at the same time, creating a minimalistic seismic network.

Net, this week we lost a possible mission to explore a lunar pole (although Russia has plans there, which will be the subject a post in the near future) and kept alive hopes for ExoMars with new plans for the addition of a capable stationary lander.