Reactions to the Budget Proposal

The future of NASA’s planetary science for the next decade will be decided here on Earth in the offices of the President’s administrators and Congress.  It takes five years to conceive, develop, and launch relatively simple missions such as those flown by the Discovery program.  Technically complex missions such as Mars rovers or Europa orbiters require longer periods to mature the concepts and bring all the required technologies to flight readiness.  NASA’s funding over the next two or three years will determine whether it will be ready to launch complex missions seven to ten years from now.

The President's proposed FY14 budget would end planning for a NASA mission to Europa.

A week and a half ago, the President releasedhis proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2014 and budget projections for the following five years.  That proposal continues support for NASA’s smaller planetary missions in the Discovery ($450-500M) and New Frontiers ($750M-1B) programs.  Funding for a 2020 Mars rover based on the Curiosity rover’s design is foreseen in future budgets.  The technology program to mature technologies to enable future missions was cut to provide funding to develop new supplies of plutonium-238 to enable missions that cannot depend on solar power. (I missed this implication in my initial budget analysis because the budget documents provided no detail on how technology funding would be spent.)  The budget proposes no funding for maturing the design of a future Europa orbiter even though Congress had just weeks earlier inserted funding for this in the FY13 budget signed by the President.

The budget did proposed detailed analysis of and technology development for a major new manned spaceflight initiative to bring a small (~7 m diameter) asteroid into lunar orbit where it could be examined by NASA astronauts.

Entangled in discussions of the FY14 proposed budget are plans of how to cut the just enacted FY13 budget by approximately 5% to meet the terms of the sequester.  Press reports have suggested that NASA plans to cut much of the increase approved by Congress for the planetary program in the FY13 budget to reduce cuts to other programs.

The President’s budget proposals are just that – proposals subject to change as Congress, the scientific community, and private citizens review the impacts and lobby for changes.  Since the budget proposal was released, the dance of lobbying and staking out positions has begun.  In this post, I’ve rounded up a summary of reactions as reported on various websites.  If you are an American citizen, I urge you to make your opinions known to your representatives in Congress.  (See the end of the post for information on how to easily do this.)

Division for Planetary Sciences Analysis

The American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences is one of the major associations for professional planetary researchers.  They released their analysis of the budget last week: [The proposed budget] “continues the same cuts to NASA’s planetary science program that were proposed in last year’s FY13 Budget Request. The FY14 request is almost $300M less than the FY12 approved operating plan… There is some good news: the Research and Analysis (R&A) program appears to receive an $8M increase in FY14 compared to FY12, and remain flat for the out-years. Funding would be provided to the Discovery Program which may enable advancement of the next AO to FY14… Many other elements of the NASA planetary program, however, suffer. The Europa Clipper pre-project study funded by Congress in FY13 has no future according to the FY14 Budget Request… Cassini might be shut down in FY15… One concern is that while the total funding requested for the Mars 2020 rover mission seems adequate, the funding profile is heavily “back-loaded” meaning the bulk of the funds would be provided in the last two years. Lessons learned from past missions show back-funded missions to be at high risk of cost over-run.”

Congressional Reaction

Space News reports that Senator Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate’s  Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies that funds NASA among other agencies, is “concerned” about the level of cuts proposed for the planetary program in the FY14 budget compared to the FY13 approved budget.  

A group of two Senators and two Representativeswrote NASA reminding its administrator that Congress approved a larger FY13 budget and requesting that NASA apply the sequester evenly across its programs.  This letter apparently was in response to the reports that NASA planned to eliminate much or all of the increase in the approved FY13 planetary budget to preserve funding for other programs from the sequester. 

Editorial Note: As is usual in NASA related Congressional positions, all the senators and representatives taking stances represent districts or states with substantial NASA activity.  While protecting local jobs is a primary survival instinct for any politician, the support for a broader planetary program among these members of Congress seems genuine.  They took care to ensure that a substantial portion of the cuts proposed by the administration were reversed in the final FY13 bill in ways that supported the scientific community’s recommendations in the Decadal Survey.  The proposed FY14 budget would reverse much of the increase in the FY13 budget.

The Planetary Society

The Planetary Society advocates for a vigorous robotic and human programs to explore the solar system.  After leading (and largely winning) a spirited fight to have many of the cuts proposed in the original FY13 budget reversed, they are back again this year fighting the cuts in the FY14 budget.  You can read their plans here.

Editorial: U.S. Planetary Science: Fading to Black

Two former senior managers in NASA’s science program, Robert Braun and Noel Hinners, wrote an editorial forSpace News (which does not require a subscription to read).  “By any objective measure, planetary science is one of America’s crown jewels… Despite the success that has built up over decades, today we are on a path that relinquishes U.S. planetary science leadership. Starting in 2017, with the end of the Juno mission at Jupiter and the Cassini mission at Saturn, NASA will only have spacecraft at or on their way to one planet: Mars… Because it takes at least five years to conceive, design and implement a planetary science mission, this cliff is not only upon us, it is getting larger with each passing day. The next suite of planetary science missions should already be in development… Unfortunately, President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget request for NASA continues the draconian path for planetary science laid out in the administration’s 2013 request… Does the U.S. really want to cede leadership of the scientific exploration of the rest of the solar system to other nations?”

Editorial Note: The opinion piece somewhat overstates the Mars focus.  The administration’s proposed budget continues support for the Discovery and New Frontiers programs.  While Discovery selections can target Mars (and the InSight Mars geophysical station in development does), it is likely that at least some future selected missions will target other destinations.  None of the approved targets for New Frontiers missions, including the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission in development, include Mars. 

However, Braun and Hinners are correct in their assessment of large missions (>$1B), where only Mars missions are envisioned.  And by the end of the decade, 60% of NASA’s planetary mission budget would focus on Mars, with the rest split between the more limited Discovery and New Frontiers missions.  This is not the balanced program of destinations envisioned in the Decadal Survey.

Reaction to the Asteroid Retrieval

In general, the most positive responses to NASA’s proposal to bring an asteroid to lunar orbit came from supporters of future asteroid mining.  Among other observers, the reactions ranged from wait and see the results of the analysis to be done this year to skepticism.  (If this proposal interests you, both the Space Review and Space Policy Online articles go into some depth in their analysis.)

The Space Review quotes Steve Squyres, (Principal Investigator for the Mars Opportunity mission, past chair for the planetary Decadal Survey, and current chair of NASA’s Advisory Committee) as saying, “I can’t assess it,” he said. “I don’t know if this can be done or not. I don’t know what it’s going to cost. It’s a very new idea, it’s very immature, it needs a really hard, carefully considered look, and then we’ll see.”

Space Policy Online reports that, “Skeptics point out that, apart from technical challenges, there is no explanation of where the money will come from to execute the mission in future years...   NASA said it thinks it might be able to do it for less [than the current ~$2.5B estimate] because some of the work is already underway, but the basis for that optimism is obscure since the agency will not even complete a mission concept study until the end of this summer… there is confusion over the relationship of this mission to protecting Earth from asteroids as well as why about humans are needed to bring back a sample of an asteroid when NASA already is building a robotic probe (OSIRIS-REx) to do that (not to mention that Japan already has done so and is planning a second mission), and the budget is murky in the short term and lacks credibility for the long term.”

Editorial Thought: I find the asteroid retrieval proposal intriguing.  I think too little is known about the technical issues and true cost to build a strategy around it just yet.  I look forward to learning those details as they become available in the next year.  For the current year, NASA is increasing funding for technologies essential to a possible retrieval but that would also be useful for other missions.

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The DSP news release provided practical advice on how you can share your opinions on NASA’s planetary budget with Congress, which will write the final FY14 budget:

“We urge every member of the Division to write letters to your two senators and your representative expressing: (1) your thanks for the past support of Congress; (2) your concern about the sequester and the implications of the President’s FY14 Budget Request for the FY13 budget and all later years; and (3) your plea for continued support from Congress.

“Please write to your senators and representative today. A hand-written letter, faxed to your representative, is best. You can also use the website provided by The Planetary Society to send your own letter or their letter, which you can edit (http://www.planetary.org/get-involved/be-a-space-advocate/take-action/); you do not need to be a member of The Planetary Society to use their website.

“To influence the FY13 NASA operating plan and the FY14 budget, the time to act is now. Please support planetary science and do not delay. A sample letter is given below, and will be posted on our website.”

Europa - New Options

Click on the slide or here to go to the site with the presentation of the Europa mission study team

At this week's meeting of the Outer Planets Analysis Group (OPAG), NASA unveiled new options for exploring Europa as a possible abode of life (and with a third option still to come).  The results are a work in progress, with completion of the studies to come next year.  However, the results so far present entirely new options to finally moving on with the study of Europa.

The new mission proposals come after the sticker shock from the previous proposal, the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO).  When JEO was defined, NASA's budget outlook seemed robust and multi-billion dollar missions possible.  At NASA management's request, its engineers designed a mission that hit the science "sweet spot."  After many months of exploring the Jupiter system, JEO would have carried an extensive suite of instruments into Europa orbit.  In what would have been an engineering tour de force, the spacecraft would have been designed to survive the hellish radiation fields around Europa for a full 90 days (and likely even longer).

Unfortunately, the independent cost estimate for JEO from the Decadal Survey's review pegged JEO's cost at close to $5 billion.  Even for a robust planetary budget, the Survey's members concluded that the price tag was too high and asked NASA to explore cheaper alternatives.

The two mission concepts presented at the OPAG meeting are NASA's response to that request.  To understand how the team arrived at its proposal, it's useful to compare the JEO approach to the Mars exploration strategy.  In the former, a single mission would be flown that would have addressed all high priority goals for Europa exploration except for those that that required a lander.  In comparison, the Mars program has depended on a series of relatively inexpensive missions that each address a subset of questions.  For less than a billion dollars a mission, NASA flew Mars Pathfinder, Mars Odyssey, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Phoenix lander.  Only the soon-to-launch Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity broke the billion dollar mark (and rather substantially).  Looking forward, the Mars program has (or perhaps given the new budget realities, perhaps its more correct to say, 'had') planned to break up the multi-billion dollar Mars sample return into three separate missions to reduced peak funding costs.

The question for the Europa mission study team was how to divide the JEO mission goals into manageable chunks.  The job of the Europa mission study team was helped by the fact that the next steps in Europa exploration naturally divide into multiple goals:

• The ocean goal would measure the extent of the ocean beneath Europa's icy shell and determine its connection to the rocky core of Europa.  This is also, because of the nature of the measurements required, is the only goal that requires orbiting Europa.  
• The other three goals -- measure the vertical structure and depth of the ice shell, measure the composition of trace materials on the surface to understand the composition of the ocean and whether it might harbor life, and image the surface to understand the processes acting on the ice shell -- would ideally be done from orbit but could be done from a multitude (>30) Europa flybys.

Two key factors had driven JEO's costs upward.  First, to meet JEO's goals from Europa orbit, the spacecraft needed to survive for 90 days or more in the harsh radiation field around Europa.  This required extensive shielding and exotic technologies for both the spacecraft electronics and for the instruments.  Second, collecting and returning all the data in just 90 days required high communications rates and as result high power rates.

Comparison of the two proposed spacecraft with the JEO proposed spacecraft

The ocean measurements that had to be done from Europa orbit required relatively small instruments, low to modest data rates, and only 30 days in orbit.  By focusing the orbiter only on those required measurements, the radiation hardening, data rate, and power requirements dropped substantially.

The remaining measurements still required substantial instruments and high data rates.  The team chose to place these instruments on a flyby spacecraft that would orbit Jupiter and encounter Europa 30+ times over the course of the mission.  (The spacecraft also would encounter Ganymede a number of times, but those flybys were planned for gravity assists and were not science drivers for the mission.)  By going to a multi-flyby strategy, the spacecraft spends only a little time each orbit in the highest radiation fields.  There are also days each orbit to return the data, dropping the requirement for peak data rates and power.

Proposed instruments

The study team estimates that the orbiter and flyby mission each would cost around $1.5B, not including the costs of the launch vehicles.  The assumption is that for budgetary reasons the missions would not launch together, and their launches might actually be years or many years apart. Assuming that funding can be found, this would place the science community in the difficult predicament of deciding which to fly first, knowing that the second mission might never fly.  Is ocean science more important or is the combination of icy shell, composition, and high resolution mapping science more important?

Proposed flyby (top) and orbiter (bottom) spacecraft

Representatives from NASA's headquarters stated their delight in having new, much lower cost mission options to present to Congress for funding.  They are so delighted that they have asked to have the same focused approach applied to a possible Europa lander mission.  Presumably, once the studies for the three possible missions are complete, NASA will ask the science community to prioritize them.  Then NASA will begin the job of securing funding to fly the highest priority mission.  NASA's representatives emphasized that there is no money in the current budget plan to fly any of these missions.  The President's office (OMB) and Congress will have to increase NASA's planetary budget for any Europa mission to begin development.

Note: A previous post, A Pragmatic Approach to Investigating Europa's Habitability provides additional background on the new approach.

Editorial Thoughts: It's exciting to have new Europa options on the table in a cost range that I can imagine one of them eventually being funded. However, looked at another way, the studies demonstrate again that exploring Europa is a multi-billion dollar proposition.  Add the cost of the orbiter and flyby with their launch vehicles together, and you are approaching $4B, not too far from the estimated cost of JEO.

Which mission would I chose?  As currently defined, I can't decide.  The eventual goal would be to get a lander on the surface of Europa, which requires picking a location that is safe (high resolution imaging) and has interesting surface chemistry (imaging spectroscopy).  This would argue for the flyby mission as the higher priority.  That mission, however, would image only small portions of the surface at higher resolution than the orbiter mission would.  (The orbiter would produce a 100 m global stereo map in three colors.)  The flyby craft would carry a sophisticated mapping spectrometer (think of a camera that takes images in hundreds of colors) that would be too large and data hungry for the orbiter.  If a simple spectrometer (for those of you familiar with these instruments, a profiling instrument) could be added or if the imager could image in more colors to get at spectral information, I would favor the orbiter.  I certainly have no special insights into these issues, and included this thought experiment only to suggest the tough choices the planetary community will face if funding becomes available.

A Reluctant Dance Towards Europa or Why A Credible Europa Mission is Likely to Cost ~$2B

For the last two years, NASA has been the shy partner refusing to get on the dance floor, and Congress has been the aggressive partner insisting on a dance now.  Recently, NASA has said maybe on another night but only if it’s a cheap date.  While NASA says no for now, Congress looks to be willing to slip the band a cool $100M – on top of $150M already paid – to keep the music playing, but (to keep the metaphor going) has not been willing to fully commit itself to paying the bigger bill to rent the dance hall.

The dance, of course, is the continuing attempt by Congress to have NASA commit to a mission to explore Europa, and NASA’s attempts to delay a mission well into the 2020s.  NASA is also seeking ideas for alternatives to the current $2B Europa Clipper concept that would cost no more than $1B but that also would presumably be less capable.

Compared to the budget waltz, the scientific case for a mission to Europa is compellingly simple.  After the Earth, Europa is considered by many scientists to be the most likely location in the solar system as a home to present life.  It has the key ingredients: an outer layer with lots of water (more than in the oceans of Earth) in contact with the rocky core (source of key elements needed to build the molecules essential for life) and energy (from the tidal heating supplied by Jupiter).  And Europa has had a lot of time for life to evolve.  Its oceans should have been present for most of the life of the solar system.  (This distinguishes it from Enceladus where the weaker tidal flexing of Saturn may allow its internal ocean to freeze for long periods of time.)  The recent observation of possible plumes spewing water into space where Europa’s ocean could be easily sampled has just raised the desire for a dedicated Europa mission.

The Europa Clipper would replace a short-lived Europa orbiter concept with a spacecraft that would fly past the moon several dozen times with a highly capable instrument payload.  At each encounter, the instruments would do low- to medium-resolution studies before and after closest encounter, but would do high resolution studies during the brief period when the spacecraft is less than 1000 km from the surface .  Credit: NASA/JPL.

The Science Goals

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Galileo orbiter made eleven of flybys past Europa.  That mission all but proved the existence of a liquid ocean beneath the moon’s icy shell and globally mapped the surface features and composition.  Galileo, however, had a crippled main antenna that reduced the returned data to a tiny trickle of what had been planned, so medium and high resolution mapping of the moon covers only small areas.  The spacecraft’s vintage 1970’s technology instruments also lacked the sophistication to identify important substances in the icy surface.  It also did not carry instruments that could probe the structure of the icy shell to look for lakes within the shell or study the shell’s interface with the ocean. 

The standard progression for exploring a world is first flyby it (which Galileo did), then orbit it for globally studies, and then land on it for intensive studies in a single location.  Unfortunately, Europa sits well within Jupiter’s harsh radiation belts, and any affordable orbiter would have weeks to a handful of months to complete its studies and would carry a minimal instrument compliment.

JPL’s engineers and scientists have developed an alternative strategy for the proposed Europa Clipper mission: Fly a highly capable spacecraft that orbits Jupiter, but that toe dips into the radiation belt and conducts its science during several dozen flybys.  The radiation challenges are still significant, but the science that would have carried a cost of >$4B as an orbiter can now be done for ~$2B.

The several dozen flybys is key to the Europa Clipper’s ability to replace an orbiter mission with a multiple-flyby mission.

During the few minutes around closest encounter, high resolution studies are done only for a narrow swath along the ground track immediately below the spacecraft's flight.  Credit: NASA/JPL.



Over several dozen flybys, the high resolution measurements build up into regional studies.  Credit: NASA/JPL.

The combination of low, medium, and high resolution measurements add up to an understanding of Europa as a world over several dozen orbits.  (Acronyms: 13F7 - name for a specific concept for a set of flybys; COT-4 - name for the final campaign (of four) for the Europa Clipper mission; SWIRS - Short-wave infrared spectrometer that would map the composition of the surface.)  Credit: NASA/JPL.

I’ll focus on just one set of requirements and how they link to several key investigations.  To ensure that proposed mission achieves global coverage, the science team has divided Europa’s map into 14 panels.  The science goals require that the spacecraft fly over at least 8 of these panels at altitudes of less than 400 kilometers with a desired goal of 11 panels.  Within each panel, the requirements specify that at least two close flybys occur in each on the Jupiter-facing hemisphere of Jupiter and three on the anti-Jupiter face.  If the minimum 8 panels are evenly distributed between the pro- and anti-Jupiter hemispheres, then 20 flybys are needed to meet the minimum science goals.

This one set of requirements for regional measurements within a panel and a distribution of regional studies across the Europan globe enables several key studies:

“Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, ocean properties, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange.

·         “Characterize the distribution of any shallow subsurface water and the structure of the icy shell.

·         “Search for an ice-ocean interface.

·         “Correlate surface features and subsurface structure to investigate processes governing material exchange among the surface, ice shell, and ocean.

·         “Characterize regional and global heat flow variations.

“Understand the habitability of Europa's ocean through composition and chemistry.

·         “Characterize the composition and chemistry of the Europa ocean as expressed on the surface and in the atmosphere

·         “Determine the role of Jupiter's radiation environment in processing materials on Europa

·         “Characterize the chemical and compositional pathways in Europa's ocean.

“Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, and characterize high science interest localities.”

(Quotes are from the Europa Clipper Science Traceability Matrix.)

The science goals similarly require a number of well distributed flybys to study the interaction of Europa’s ocean with Jupiter’s intense magnetosphere to estimate the depth and salinity of the ocean and to study tides to estimate the ice shell’s thickness. 

The current Europa Clipper mission concept goes well beyond the minimum science goals to deliver on almost all the extended goals that the science community has set.  However, cutting the current mission concept from its 45 Europa flybys to a minimum of 20 or fewer flybys seems unlikely to cut the mission costs in half.  Once you build and fly a spacecraft to Europa that can withstand 20 encounters, operate a suite of instruments, and return a large volume of data between encounters, I suspect that you've already incurred most of $2B cost (but remember that I am neither an engineer nor a planetary scientist). 

Is Cheaper Credible?

NASA managers have formally asked if a credible Europa mission could be done for half the Clipper cost estimate, or around $1B.  This is a good news/bad news scenario.  NASA took the initiative to propose an in-depth study by suggesting spending $15M next year ($85M less than the House of Representatives appears ready to approve for next year, see below).  However, next year’s study would be followed by several years before any mission conceived would actually begin development and a decade or more before it might launch.

NASA issued a Request For Information on concepts for a $1B mission.  It has required that proposers, “meet the majority of the five science goals set forth in the Decadal Survey [priorities set by the scientific community], including the goal to characterize scientifically compelling sites to prepare for a potential future lander mission to Europa.”  Those scientific goals are, in priority order, to:

” Characterize the extent of the ocean and its relation to the deeper interior;

“Characterize the ice shell and any subsurface water, including their heterogeneity, and the nature of surface-ice-ocean exchange;

” Determine global surface compositions and chemistry, especially as related to habitability;

 “Understand the formation of surface features, including sites of recent or current activity, and identify and characterize candidate sites for future in situ exploration;

” Understand Europa’s space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere.

“While characterizing landing sites for future in situ exploration is the fourth scientific priority in the Planetary Decadal Survey, NASA places high programmatic priority on this goal to enable a potential future lander mission to Europa.” (From the Request for Information.)

The request goes on to list the challenges of implementing the mission.  “The primary challenges facing any mission to Europa involve the harsh radiation environment and planetary protection requirements… Planetary Protection requirements for Europa are very strict and involve ensuring that the probability of introducing a viable Earth organism into Europa is [less than one in 10,000].”

The request's details make it clear that proposers must do a solid amount of science and engineering analysis to show that they have a credible concept that could cost less than $1B (not including the launch costs) and make their case in 15 pages

It is common for government agencies to issue these “Requests for Information” to learn whether an idea is credible and worth pursuing.  This request doesn’t commit NASA to any follow up studies, but if its managers judge any of the proposals to be credible, it presumably would follow through with more detailed analyses.

Is a $1B mission idea credible?  I did a thought experiment in a previous post and concluded that technically it likely is.  The Juno spacecraft that will orbit and study Jupiter cost ~$700M.  A mission to fly by Jupiter’s moon Io, deeper in Jupiter’s radiation field, six or so times has been estimated to cost ~$1B.  The European’s JUICE mission will reach Jupiter next decade, flyby Europa twice, and then orbit the moon Ganymede for ~$1.2B.  

If the goal simply is to fly by Europa a few times with a spacecraft with a small number of instruments, then by analogy with these other Jupiter missions, it likely can be done for ~$1B.  The bar, though, for a scientifically credible mission is higher.  A follow-on mission has to substantially enhance our scientific understanding of Europa to justify a cost of $1B to $2B.  Most of the key studies identified by the science team require numerous flybys distributed across the globe.

However, Europe’s JUICE 2020’s JUICE mission to the Europa system is committed to two flyby of Europa with a highly capable spacecraft and instrument suite.  To be justified, a NASA mission must produce significantly better science than the already funded JUICE mission will.  (While the JUICE mission, which is still in design, it has committed to just two flybys of Europa. I suspect that if the engineers conclude it is safe, the mission’s managers will consider one or two additional flybys closer to launch.)

So is there hope for a $1B mission that is scientifically compelling?  Color me skeptical (and several of NASA’s managers are reported to have said they  are skeptical, too), but if there is, I suspect that it will come in one of two forms:

• A proposal suggests a clever way to redefine the science goals in a way that returns the core science with a simpler and cheaper spacecraft.  The team that proposed the Juno mission on its way to Jupiter did this for studies of Jupiter’s deep atmosphere and interior.  The current Europa Clipper multi-flyby proposal redefines the science goals from previous orbiter proposals to substantially cut costs.  Is there another option that can cut costs substantially again?
• A proposal combines limited regional studies with flights through the possible plumes of Europa to directly measure water, and possibly life, expelled either from a lake within the shell or directly from the ocean.  (However, remember that only one of several studies saw data that suggested plumes were present and those measurements were near the limit of detection.  The plumes may be ephemeral or not even exist.  Justifying a mission on the current plume data seems risky to me; a better strategy would seem to be to have a viable mission without the plumes but carry the already planned instruments that would also be useful to study the plumes.  The JUICE mission team is already planning this.)

In a few months, we are likely to learn whether NASA received any proposals it considers worthy of further study.  They key, though, will be whether the science community agrees that the mission meets the core requirements for understanding Europa.  If it doesn't, then the community seems likely to recommend waiting until budgets allow the right mission to be flown.  Missions to each outer planet or their moons occur only every couple of decades.  Why do a sub-par job on the next mission to Europa and then have to do it over a decade or two later to get it right?

The Politics

In the introduction to this post, I said that NASA (and the President’s budget office that writes NASA’s budget requests) and Congress disagree on whether a Europa mission should begin now or wait to begin development several years from now.

The root of the disagreement, as in so many relationships, is money.  Jupiter’s harsh, electronics-frying radiation belts, make any mission that does more than a handful of flybys a technically challenging – read expensive – proposition.  More than a decade’s worth of technology development and mission studies has provided the solutions to most of the technical challenges.  JPL’s scientists and engineers have developed a killer proposal for a dedicated multi-flyby Europa Clipper mission.  At ~$2B, this mission would be cheaper than the Curiosity rover mission currently exploring Gale crater on Mars.

Unfortunately, NASA’s budget is oversubscribed.  The only way to fit the Clipper mission into the budget is to either increase NASA’s budget by several hundred million dollars a year for several years (which I would support as a US taxpayer!) or take the funding from other NASA programs. 

We are left with this strange waltz in which Congress, which ultimately sets NASA’s budget, has not increased the overall budget enough to fully fund the Clipper mission, but over the last two years provided $150M for advanced development work.  This year, the House of Representatives is proposing to put another $100M in the pot for next year.  If the Senate continues its previous support, it is likely to substantially match this funding. 

At the other side of the dance floor, the President’s budget managers and NASA’s managers have made it clear that they don’t want to commit to any Europa mission this decade because of the funding constraints.  They also seem reluctant to commit to any $2B-class science mission because the last two large science missions (the James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity rover) went well over budget, which caused substantial harm to the overall science program. 

As a result, today NASA is spending $150M because it’s legally required to (Federal budgets in the US are laws) to advance a mission its senior managers don’t want to do, at least for this decade. 

The House of Representatives has released details of its proposed budget for next year.  Where NASA proposed to spend $15M to study $1B mission concepts, the  House is proposing to spend $100M.  Under the House’s bill none of the funding could go towards a $1B mission (which it doesn't see as credible) but only towards the full Europa Clipper mission. 

We will have to wait for several weeks to see what the Senate proposes.  It will be several months before we learn what the two houses of Congress ultimately compromise on for next year.

New NASA Budget Proposal

The Obama administration has presented a summary of what will be its Fiscal Year 2010 budget. The news for NASA overall is good. The FY10 proposal will be $1.4B greater than the FY08 actual and $900M more than the FY09 proposed budget. In addition, the stimulas package provides an additional $1B, with most of those funds targetted to new Earth observation missions (my bread and butter) and to exploration, which I believes means manned exploration.

The FY10 summary is sparse on details -- the entire paragraph dealing with robotic exploration appears below. The key news is that if Congress approves the budget, then NASA will have some significant new funding. We will have to wait until this spring to see how much goes to the planetary program. My guess is that the majority of the increase will go to Earth observations and building the craft for the next generation of manned flights. However, the increased money decreases pressure on NASA to pull money from the science programs to fund the manned program. My guess is that the best the planetary program will get may be some extra money to help pay for the Mars Science Laboratory cost overruns. NASA already has a number of planetary programs in flight or underway. Just keeping those on track will, in my opinion, be good news. However, the Obama administration is welcome to delight me by proving me wrong with a significant increase to the planetary program. :>

From the two page budget summary:

[The proposed FY10 budget]
Funds a Robust Program of Space Exploration
involving humans and Robots.
NASA’s astronauts and robotic spacecraft have
been exploring our solar system and the universe
for more than 50 years. The Agency will
create a new chapter of this legacy as it works to
return Americans to the Moon by 2020 as part
of a robust human and robotic space exploration
program. NASA also will send a broad suite of
robotic missions to destinations throughout the
solar system and develop a bold new set of astronomical
observatories to probe the mysteries of
the universe, increasing investment in research,
data analysis, and technology development in
support of these goals.

For those of you not familiar with the U.S budgeting process, here's a brief overview. The President proposes a budget for the next fiscal year (which starts Oct 1), usually in February. When there is a new administration, the details usually come in the spring. The two houses of Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate, each pass their own version of the budget which can differ by several hundred million for NASA's science program. The two houses plus the White House then dicker on the details and pass a final budget which then must be approved and signed by the President. The final FY10 budget is unlikely much before October and may well come sometime after that.

In the past few years, Congress and the White House have not been able to agree on a budget, and NASA (along with most other branches of the U.S. government) have been funded at approximately the previous year's level. This effectively is a cut in funding since inflation will reduce purchasing power. Budget increases for NASA will be welcome, indeed.

Budget Fight

As I'm sure most readers of this blog know, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- the successor to the Hubble Telescope -- is seriously over budget.  The latest estimate puts the cost to complete the telescope at $8B, with only $3.5B of that already spent.  Based on the budget proposed for JWST for next year, it would take almost a decade to complete development.  (You may see a JWST budget estimate of $8.7B, which includes $0.7B to operate the telescope after launch.)

NASA has proposed to the White House (specifically, the Office of Management and Budget) that it 'tax' it's other programs, both science and manned spaceflight, to increase the budget for JWST and launch it around 2018.  There's no news, so far as I know, publicly available about the White House's reaction.  The House of Representatives voted to kill JWST.

A number of leading planetary scientists have just published a strongly worded editorial stating, "We individually and together reject the premise that JWST must be restored at all costs... Without additional funds to NASA, JWST should not be restored unless and until an open science community assessment is made of the value of what will be gained and what will be lost across the entire NASA science portfolio."

A less strongly worded letter from Dr. David Alexander, Chair, American Astronomical Society, Solar Physics Division (SPD), echoes some of the same concerns, "The SPD fully supports the science goals of the JWST and the priorities of our colleagues in astronomy and astrophysics; however, it is extremely worrisome that the proposed solution to the problem will further reduce the ability of the other divisions within the NASA Science Mission Directorate to accomplish their own nationally sanctioned scientific programs."

The journal Nature's News Blog has some additional analysis of these letters and their motivation.

Editorial Thoughts: The problems in JWST's funding comes at the same time as NASA's manned spaceflight program faces it's own budget challenges.  The programs on NASA's plate simply appear to be more expensive than it's current budget can pay for.  I don't know what the least wrong solution is, but the following thoughts may suggest how difficult the choices may be.

JWST promises to continue Hubble's revolution in the understanding of the universe.  Here's a list of the JWST program's major science programs, copied from the its website:

• The End of the Dark Ages: First Light and Reionization seeks to identify the first bright objects that formed in the early Universe, and follow the ionization history.
• Assembly of Galaxies will determine how galaxies and dark matter, including gas, stars, metals, physical structures (like spiral arms) and active nuclei evolved to the present day.
• The Birth of Stars and Protoplanetary Systems focuses on the birth and early development of stars and the formation of planets.
• Planetary Systems and the Origins of Life studies the physical and chemical properties of solar systems (including our own) and where the building blocks of life may be present.

What might be lost from the planetary program if it's budget is cut?  The planetary Decadal Survey prioritized its programs as:

1. Research funding
2. Discovery missions (4-5 in this decade)
3. New Frontiers missions (3 in this decade)
4. U.S contribution to the NASA/ESA 2018 rover

If NASA were to cut starting the planetary program starting with the lowest priority, it would appear that the 2018 rover would be the first to be cut.  That mission would place a second rover (after the soon to be launched Mars Science Laboratory) with a highly capable analytical laboratory on Mars.  The mission also would collect and cache samples for possible return to Earth.

JWST and the 2018 Mars rover both would be great missions.  How would you make the decision?  If you are an American citizen, you might want to share your choice with your senators and congressman.

More responses to Stern

The New York Times has published a set of responses to Alan's Sterns letter (see previous posts) from "industry insiders." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/opinion/l01nasa.html?_r=2 (With thanks to a reader who sent me the link.)

I encourage you to read the full letters, but for those who are too busy, here are highlights from each:

"Before Mr. Griffin’s tenure, there was a long history of low-ball estimates. Senators or representatives with local constituencies to please would not let a major center project be canceled no matter how bad the overruns... Management of complex, technical projects in the current Washington environment requires extraordinary technical and political skill, as well as the ability to pick battles you can win."

"Whether during design, production or operations, the lack of a sufficient budget forces capable, well-meaning and goal-oriented government and contractor personnel to cut corners. This, in turn, often elevates safety risk... [ensuring adequate funding] may mean forgoing certain missions altogether and delaying others until it is “their turn.” Trying to finance everything at once on the cheap is a recipe for both budget and safety problems."

"While NASA must strive to be fiscally prudent, it is inevitable that when you attempt to perform science no one has ever tried, you will run into technological hurdles that cannot be anticipated... If NASA wishes to remain at the forefront of the world’s technology, it has to be willing to accept a certain amount of risk."

"Scientists are optimistic about how much they can do, managers are eager to accept low cost projections, and contractors are inclined to submit the lowest bid that is at all believable. But Dr. Stern’s bitter tone makes it easy to forget how astonishingly successful these missions have been... NASA needs to reform its process for developing programs while retaining the imagination and innovation so crucial to the endeavor."

"Alan Stern’s argument that “NASA’s managers and masters must all make cost performance just as important as mission successes” is absurd... The space program’s greatest accomplishments, including Apollo, Viking, Voyager, Hubble and Cassini, ended up costing more than NASA thought they would going in. So did the Panama Canal, the transcontinental railroad and almost everything else this country has ever done that was hard to do."

MSL landing site down selection

Summarized from http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov/landingsites/msl2009/memoranda/msl_landing_site_memo_nov_08.pdf

"On November 5, 2008, representatives of the MSL project management, engineering, and science teams met along with members of the external MSL landing site steering committee and selected review board members to discuss the engineering assessment of landing safety, basic traversability, and the current status of predicted actuator thermal performance, in order to combine this information with the science rankings from the 3rd Community Workshop recommended to the PSG. Based on assessment over the
past months, the project resources and timeline allow only 3 or 4 sites to have the full data acquisition and detailed analyses required for final approval by next spring."

"Therefore the final 4 sites selected for further analysis are:
Holden
Gale
Mawrth (ellipse placement #2)
Eberswalde"

This is based on a science prioritization of:

Group 1: Holden, Eberswalde, Gale
Group 2: Mawrth, Nili
Group 3: Miyamoto, S. Meridiani

And an engineering prioritization of:

Group 1: Holden, Gale, Mawrth
Group 2: Eberswalde (risk still fairly low for portions of ellipse surveyed, but potential high slopes and
rock coverage issues in remainder of ellipse)
“Group 2.5”: Nili [with some discussion that the site may be outside the engineering limits altogether]

New Approach for the Blog

When I started this blog almost a decade ago, there wasn't another site that regularly focused on future planetary exploration.  That has since changed, especially with regular postings by Jason Davis at the Planetary Society.  At the same time, since I have become a professor, my time is more constrained.

With these changes, I plan to make changes to this blog.  First, I will do a weekly posting with links to good articles and blog posts on issues relevant to future planetary exploration.  I intend for this to be similar to the excellent Ed's Up weekly collection of excellent news writing (you can subscribe at https://tinyletter.com/edyong209), except that I will post mine here rather than it being an email newsletter.

I also plan to continue to write in-depth analyses about once a month (see the previous post on missions to Uranus and Neptune as an example).  Right now, I'm working on a story about what we know about the missions proposed for the current New Frontiers competition.  There's good information available on about half of them.

In the weekly updates, I may also write short updates of my own.  This week, easily the biggest news is the cancellation of Space X's Red Dragon lander.  The company make many claims about this lander (see, for example, here and here).  I'm not surprised to see it cancelled.  Developing a spacecraft that can land on rockets reliably is hard.  NASA, which ultimately funds the development through its contracts with Space X, was skeptical about using this system to land astronauts.  Without the terrestrial version, there isn't a Martian version.  I recommend Eric Berger's story linked below for more background.

The first full summary of stories published on future planetary exploration will come next week.  In the meantime, here's a link to three good stories from the past week.

Congress gives NASA's planetary science division some love (and a Mars orbiter)

Jason Davis • July 19, 2017

The House of Representatives proposed $2.1 billion for NASA's planetary science budget, which would be an all-time high. Part of the increase would be used to start work on a new reconnaissance and communications orbiter.

Back to Mercury! Europe and Japan's BepiColombo mission moves closer to launch

Jason Davis • July 14, 2017

Next year, a pair of probes head to Mercury to answer outstanding questions about our innermost planet, as well as the formation of the solar system. 

 

SpaceX appears to have pulled the plug on its Red Dragon plans

Eric Berger - 7/19/2017, 12:20 PM