Let's Add an Instrument

I think many of readers of this blog read about a proposed mission and imagine how much the mission might be improved with just another instrument or two or another goal or two.  I certainly do.
I learned in my life in a high tech company, though, that "simple" additions often turn out not to be simple and could drive up cost rapidly.  For those of us outside of the planetary mission design world, it's hard for us to understand which additions might truly simple additions and which would be unacceptably complex and costly.

The recently published Decadal Survey mission concept studies offer a peak into some of these tradeoffs.  Several reports explicitly explore several versions of missions with a variety of goals and instrument costs.  In this blog entry, I'll look at examples of the cost tradeoffs for possible missions to Ganymede and Enceladus.  The concept studies don't cover all options I would have liked to see discussed.  For example, how much would it drive up the costs of an Enceladus orbiter to have an instrument or two to study Titan during several flybys?  Or, what would be the design and cost impacts of adding several Europa flybys for a Ganymede orbiter?  Still, these reports offer insights that often aren't available to the public.  They also were all carried out under the same ground rules and using the same FY15 dollar costs, making comparisons between them reasonable.

The following table list a number of Ganymede and Enceladus mission options.  The Ganymede missions differ both in the number of instruments and in the length of time in Ganymede orbit.  The Enceladus missions would all orbit that moon for 12 months (except for a multiple flyby mission), but differ in the number of instruments.  Several of the Enceladus options were also ranked for relative science value.

Option numbers are from the reports listed at the end of this blog entry.  Click on image for a larger version.

The Ganymede mission options range from $1.3B to $1.7B.  Looking at the charts in the table, most of the difference in costs appears to be driven by costs associated with building and operating additional instruments rather than the longer time in orbit.   This is dramatically shown by adding up the costs to build and test the instruments suites for the Ganymede orbiter.  They are $62M, $96M, and $190M for the three options (reserves do not appear to be included in these numbers, so the real costs probably could be higher by ~50%).  Additional instruments also require additional operational costs and additional teams of scientists to plan instrument usage and analyze the results.  (Instrument costs given do not have reserves included; total mission costs do.)

The Enceladus orbiter missions range from $1.6B to $2.7B.  The costs of individual items wasn't detailed in charts, but by examing the graph showing relative cost elements, it appears that this difference again is largely driven by the costs of building and operating different instrument suites.

Costs of individual instruments vary considerably.  A magnetometer is only a few million dollars.  A mass spectrometer, radio and plasma wave package, or a subsurface radar isseveral tens of millions of dollars.

Even for a specific instrument type, costs can vary considerably.  The simpler Ganymede mass spectrometer apparently would cost ~$25M to build while the more sophisticated Enceladus mass spectrometer would cost ~$57M.  (Note: For some items, I'm making educated guesses to determine which instrument costs in the reports go with which instruments.)

Neither the Ganymede nor Enceladus mission reports spell out the cost of a narrow angle camera (NAC), which would be useful for exploring their target worlds and really useful for observing the rest of the Jupiter or Saturn systems.  However, it appears that instrument #10 in the Ganymede report at ~$13M is the NAC and the Io observer NAC is listed at ~$17M.  These are simple cameras compared to those proposed for the Titan and Europa flagship missions that proposed NACs costing ~$54M and ~$43M respectively.  A lot of capability is given up to keep the costs of these Decadal Survey concept missions below the Flagship mission costs.

Editorial Thoughts: My favorite instrument to add to an Enceladus mission would be a 2-micron imager that would use a spectral window in the atmosphere for high resolution imaging of Titan.  The specific costs of that instrument wasn't spelled out in the reports.  However, assuming that its cost might be similar to that of a NAC (similar optical and mechanical design but a different sensor, I think), then the final cost to the mission might be $35-40M with design, fabrication, testing, operation, analysis.

I would hate to see a mission go to Enceladus and not carry this instrument.  However, it might be that adding this instrument would  bust the budget and jeopardize approval of the mission.  In my experience, engineers are very creative at exploring all the options.  Then they become hard nosed about what has to be left out to fit within the financial, manpower, expertise, and weight restrictions.  If this instrument can be flown within those restrictions, I expect that it will be.  In the meantime, I can imagine what such a mission might do.

Source reports:

Reports can be downloaded from: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/SSB_059331

Ganymede Orbiter Concept Study

Enceladus Flyby & Sample Return Concept Studies*

Enceladus Orbiter Concept Study

*Despite its title, this study examined a range of missions from multiple flybies to several flavors of orbiters to samples return and landers.

Budget Cuts and Future Planetary Exploration

Anyone not living in a cave has heard that the elections in the United States have resulted in a more conservative Congress promising to reduce the federal deficit.  Budget tightening in the United States is hardly unique.  As the Wall Street Journal reported last summer, ESA may be facing its own budget problems, or at the least not growing its programs as fast as some would hope.  (Subsequent news from Europe seems to suggest no ESA budget cuts in the short term.)

This blog is purposefully not political. If you want to argue politics, there are many good blogs and discussion boards for that.  I will not discuss whether or not I think the federal budget should be cut.  Rather, I want to explore the implications of some ideas that have been put out by newly ascendant Republican leadership.

One idea is to return the level of federal spending in 2011 to the level in 2008.  The other is impose a freeze on discretionary spending (essentially anything other than interest on the federal debt and entitlements; military and security might or might not be included; without the military and security spending, discretionary spending is roughly 15% of the budget) for an unspecified number of years.

As I have done for previous analyses of budgets for future planetary missions, I have added up the budget amounts for future mission development and current mission operations.  (This leaves out funds for scientific research and R&D.)  I have then multiplied the current year budget by ten as an estimate of funding available for the next decade.  This assumes that future budget increases match the inflation rate, and that funding for operation of missions that have yet to launch will be similar to funding for missions currently in flight.  So, this is a fairly simplistic analysis that makes use of easily obtained public budget documents.

Here are some key budget figures:

FY08 ~$949M (approved) or ~$9.5 over a decade
FY10 ~$1.1B (approved) or ~$11.0B over a decade
FY11 ~1.16 (proposed) or ~$11.6B over a decade

The proposed FY11 budget has not been approved.  The politics get murky at this point, but based on precedence, NASA's planetary program is likely to be funded in FY11 (Oct. 2010 to Sept. 2011) at about the FY10 rate.  The difference over a decade would almost fund an additional Discovery mission at the fully burdened rate (or ~$800M which includes costs above the $450M available to the principle investigator).

If the budget is reduced to FY08 levels, then NASA's looses ~$1.5B over a decade compared to the FY10 budget level, or a bit more than the burdened cost of a New Frontiers mission.

If NASA's budget for future missions was frozen for a decade, NASA would lose about the equivalent funding of a New Frontiers program whether the initial level is at FY08 or FY10 budget levels.  If the starting budget was the FY08 level and then frozen, then the result would be the loss of funding equivalent to approximately two New Frontiers missions compared to the FY10 budget level increased for inflation.

Editorial thoughts: In one important sense, this analysis is extremely simplistic.  NASA has two major programs, the manned program and the unmanned science program of which planetary exploration is a part.  (And even this is simplistic since it leaves out aeronautical research.)  NASA's manned spaceflight program is at a crossroads.  Meeting either the ambitious return to the moon goals of President Bush or the go to Mars via near Earth asteroids goals of President Obama requires high levels of funding.  It is my observation that the manned side of NASA gets more political attention than the science side.  It is quite possible that any budget cuts would not be applied equally to the two sides, and the net impact on future planetary missions may be greater than the quick analysis above suggests.

Planetary exploration is discretionary spending.  Nations budget for it after they fund what they see as the core needs of their people.  If the political process in the United States or elsewhere determines that spending levels must be reduced, I would not argue for special dispensation for planetary exploration.  Rather, I hope that the program that will be recommended by the Decadal Survey will be flexible enough to remain viable if spending cuts do occur.

Planetary Exploration in the new NASA program

If you follow space exploration at all, you are probably aware that NASA's manned spaceflight program is undergoing a major overhaul.  A vigorous debate has broken out about how to replace the goals and programs of the previous moon-based plan with a new program that will fit within the projected NASA budget.  In the US, the President generally proposes program direction but Congress must ratify and fund that direction.  The in's and out's of the debate are outside the scope of this blog.  However, it appears that a compromise has been developed and approved as an authorization by the Senate.  Authorizations are essentially Congress' policy documents that are supposed to guide the actual budget, but the connection between the two are sometimes tenuous.  If you are interested in following the process, I recommend www.spacepolitics.com.

I've held off on reporting on this process until a consensus had appeared to form.  According to Aviation Week and Space Technology (subscription article), the current proposal will leave the President's request for FY11 science funding -- including the planetary program -- untouched.  This would be good news since the proposed budget provides a one time increase above the inflation level for the planetary program.  However, the technology development program (which is part of the manned rather than science budget) will be dramatically reduced to help pay for the other elements of the manned spaceflight program.  This budget was to have included an ambitious program of precursor missions to the moon, near Earth asteroids, and Mars.  We'll have to wait for the details of the final budget to see if any of these proposed missions will survive.

Tighter Space Budgets?

Two articles suggest that space budgets may be tighter in coming years because of the financial crisis and government deficits.  At the moment, there are no actual cuts being made.

For a review of the Obama administration's request that all agencies identify their least important 5% of spending, see What NASA programs could be vulnerable to a budget cut? from Space Politics.


For a review of the ESA budget situation, see ESA needs to 'tighten the belt' amid budget crisis at Spaceflight Now.

If budgets are cut, existing planetary exploration budgets may or may not be targeted.  However, if agency budgets are cut, it seems unlikely that new funding would be added to planetary exploration budgets.

Robotic Precursor Missions

The last blog entry discussed the proposed NASA budget for FY11 and projected budgets through FY15.  The overall NASA budget also calls for an extensive series of robotic "precursor" missions to the moon, Mars, and near Earth asteroids.  The goals of these missions will not be scientific but rather will be to fly ahead of presumed eventual human missions to demonstrate technologies, assess potential resources to use, and determine if hazards are present. 

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions were flown under a similar program aimed at returning humans to the moon.  What's new in this budget proposal is that the list of targets has been expanded to include Mars and the near Earth asteroids.

While these aren't science missions, it's likely that the missions will make measurements that are scientifically useful.  LRO will be turned over to the planetary science program in the next few months to become a scientific mission once the primary mission of mapping the moon for future manned missions is completed.  Looking ahead, exploring the craters at the lunar poles for ice also would provide valuable scientific data.  It's hard to imagine that a mission could explore potential resources at a near Earth asteroid without making composition measurements that also would be scientifically valuable.  And all these missions probably would carry cameras, so armchair explorers will get to see new sites in the solar system.

The proposed budgets for these missions is projected to grow considerably to be almost twice as large as the largest planetary science budget item (Mars) and be equal to more than half the entire planetary budget.

Not much information is available at this time on these precursor missions.  I've copied the following paragraphs from the Exploration Systems NASA budget document (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428356main_Exploration.pdf).

An additional key contributor to a robust exploration program will be the acquisition of critical knowledge gained through the pursuit of exploration precursor robotic missions. These missions will provide vital information—from soil chemistry to radiation dose levels to landing site scouting to resource identification—necessary to plan, design and operate future human missions. These missions will help us determine the next step for crews beyond low Earth orbit, answering such questions as: Is a particular asteroid a viable target for crewed mission? Do the resources at the lunar poles have the potential for crew utilization? Is Mars dust toxic?

NASA will send precursor robotic missions to candidate destinations for human exploration such as the Moon, Mars and its moons, Lagrange points, and nearby asteroids to scout targets for future human activities, and identify hazards and resources that will determine the future course of expanding human civilization into space. Projects will make critical observations, test approaches and operations concepts, and identify specific target destinations directly beneficial to future human space activities. Instruments, destinations and missions will be prioritized based on their utility to future human activities... While there may be some synergies between this program and the Planetary Science theme within SMD, care will be taken to avoid unnecessary duplication. Dedicated precursor exploration missions are planned to remain below $800 million in total cost, and most will be considerably less expensive.

NASA will begin funding at least two dedicated precursor missions in 2011. One will likely be a lunar mission to demonstrate tele-operation capability from Earth and potentially from the International Space Station, including the ability to transmit near-live video to Earth. This will also result in investigations for validating the availability of resources for extraction. NASA will provide opportunities to participate in the payloads and observation teams, and potentially portions of the spacecraft, through open competition.

NASA will also select at least one additional robotic precursor mission to initiate in 2011, and identify potential future missions to begin in 2012 and/or 2013. Potential missions may include:

• Landing on asteroids or the moons of Mars rather than orbiting these bodies would allow us to better determine whether they pose safety hazards to astronauts or contain materials useful for future explorers. Landing can also test technologies that could help future human missions.
• Landing a facility to test processing technologies for transforming lunar or asteroid materials for fuel could eventually allow astronauts to partially “live off the land.”
• In Situ Resource Utilization: NASA will fund research in a variety of ISRU activities aimed at using lunar, asteroidal, and Martian materials to produce oxygen and extract water from ice reservoirs.
• Autonomous Precision Landing: In FY 2011, NASA will initiate development of a flight experiment to demonstrate an autonomous precision landing and hazard avoidance system. NASA will pursue use of this system on the first robotic precursor exploration mission to the Moon or other planetary body.
• Advanced In-Space Propulsion: NASA will work with partners in industry as appropriate, to conduct foundational research to study the requirements and potential designs for advanced high-energy in-space propulsion systems to support deep-space human exploration, and to reduce travel time between Earth’s orbit and future destinations for human activity. These technologies could include nuclear thermal propulsion, solar and nuclear electric propulsion, plasma propulsion, and other high-energy and/or high-efficiency propulsion concepts.
• Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Technology: NASA will develop and test concepts for large aeroshells and advanced thermal protection system materials to enable aero-capture and atmospheric entry of heavy payloads. These technologies will enable the demonstration of EDL capabilities on future robotic precursor and flagship missions.

FY11 NASA Budget Proposal Details

NASA today released its detailed proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2011 (which starts this October).  Normally this is released with the entire federal budget, but the big picture pieces of NASA's budget (read, manned spaceflight program) were not settled until a day or two before the release of the entire federal budget proposal.  The budget package includes hard figures for the proposed FY11 budget and progressively softer projected figures for out years until 2015.

All figures are mine and are derived from the budget numbers in NASA's documentation.

As I previously reported based on a summary budget, NASA's planetary program is proposed to have a large (10.8%) increase from FY10 to FY11.  Projected budgets show increasingly smaller annual increases that could well fall below the rate of inflation and could lose purchasing power over time.

Big winners in this proposal for FY11 are the Lunar program (31.9% increase), the Mars program (28%), and the technology program (19.7%).  The planetary program does not have to include payment to restart the production of plutonium-238 within its budget.  (I haven't looked elsewhere within NASA and DOE's budgets to see where the dollars are budgeted).

The budget apparently includes enough money in the Outer Planets program to fund early development of the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission for the next year or two.  However, to fly this mission around 2020, the outer planets budget has to increase by several hundred million a year by FY14.  The budget documents state, "In FY 2010 and FY 2011 NASA will continue to provide funding for further definition study and technology development efforts for the Outer Planets Future mission while awaiting the results of the Decadal Survey establishing the science community's highest joint priorities. NASA will also continue to negotiate the details of potential partnerships with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners."  The budget line for Outer Planets also includes funding for the Casinni mission. Funding for the Cassini mission will be about $60M per year.

The Discovery and New Frontiers missions essentially continue unchanged with each showing small changes year-to-year as missions complete and ramp up development.

Editorial Thoughts: The one time budget increase is nice, but much of it's benefit could be lost due to future inflationary pressure.  Given the increasing pressure to freeze or cut large portions of the federal budget, it's nice that if this budget is substantially approved by Congress that the figure to cut from in the future would start from a larger FY11 number.

There is a large mismatch between NASA's stated intention to fly JEO and the money projected in this budget.  Put simply, if JEO flies, then something else must shrink or go away.  Consider what would be needed if by 2015, JEO might need as much as ~$600M.  To give you an idea of how challenging this would be, funding JEO at $600M in FY15 could be done by budgeting $100M from the Outer Planets program, eliminating the Lunar Quest program, eliminating the New Frontiers program, and taking about $150M from the Mars program (which would probably make Mars Sample Return undoable in the early 2020s.)  I want to emphasize that I don't know the exact funding required by JEO in FY15; this is a guesstimate from figures published in EJSM Final Report.  However, the actual figure will be large, and $500-600M is probably in the right ballpark.

Another alternative would be to plan a less ambitious outer planets program that focuses on several New Frontiers class missions instead of a single flagship mission.  Over time, the total figure might be the same, but funding peaks could be lower.  Here is what one program might look like (using projected FY15 budget numbers):

• Mars $485M
• Outer Planets $450M (more slowly implemented JEO or a series of New Frontiers class missions)
• Discovery (for inner planets/primitive bodies) $313M

What would be lost under this concept would be the Lunar and New Frontiers programs.

It appears that NASA will make the final decisions on how to program future budgets based on the recommendations of the Decadal Survey.  So I view the budget numbers past FY13 a simply running out the program as it is understood today.  Depending on what the Decadal Survey proposes, budgets for FY14 onwards may look very different than what is presented here.

Resources:

Planetary budget proposal http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428154main_Planetary_Science.pdf

Other NASA budget documents http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

Additional Budget Background: The following paragraphs are quoted from the budget document and discuss what future programs would be funded.

Mars: "The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and (if technically possible) both Spirit and Opportunity rovers (MER) will continue to explore and perform data analysis throughout FY 2011. Concept studies with the ESA-NASA 2016/2018 partnership missions will finalize and the Mars 16 mission will enter into formulation phase by the end of FY 2011."

Outer Planets: "NASA Cassini will continue its historic operations and data analysis. In FY 2010 and FY 2011 NASA will continue to provide funding for further definition study and technology development efforts for the Outer Planets Future mission while awaiting the results of the Decadal Survey establishing the science community's highest joint priorities. NASA will also continue to negotiate the details of potential partnerships with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other international partners."

Lunar: "LADEE completed its preliminary design review in FY 2009 and will enter Implementation Phase (KDP-C) in late FY 2010. The ILN/Lunar Surface Science mission will continue with its the risk reduction efforts during FY 2011. NASA will negotiate and work the Plutonium restart capability with DOE throughout FY 2011." 

Discovery: "A new Discovery 12 AO selection will be made by the end of FY 2011 following the AO release in early CY 2010."

New Frontiers: "Having recently chosen three concept studies to pursue in 2010, NASA expects to select one New Frontiers 3 mission to proceed into Phase B (or an extended Phase A) by third quarter to late FY 2011."

Technology Development: "The In-Space Propulsion Program (ISP) will continue toward a completion of the NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) electric propulsion life validation. The Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) Program, working with the Department of Energy, will start the flight development of the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ARSG) that would support a flight in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Furthermore, the RPS Program continues to develop technologies and processes to support current and future NASA missions. The Advanced Multi-Mission Operation System (AMMOS) project will continue to develop the multi-mission software tools for spacecraft navigation and mission planning throughout FY 2011."

More Budget Perspective

If you are interested in policy and the budgets that support them, this post provides links to a number of other sites.  The big news in this budget proposal is on the manned exploration side, and some of the links below discuss these implications.

Before I list the links, here are a couple of more thoughts:

• The increase in the Planetary program may be to pay for the production of plutonium-238.  Last year, Congress complained that the Department of Energy (which by U.S. law is the only agency allowed to produce these nuclear materials) was bearing the budget hit for new Pu-238 production.  The increase to next year's budget may be to move that hit to NASA (who would just funnel the funds to DOE).
• In an e-mail discussion, Phil H. points out that the new Precursor program might fund the Lunar sample return that is currently a candidate for the next New Frontiers slot.  I think this is possible (and almost any speculation is possible right now given the scarcity of details on this new program).  However, the near Earth asteroid mission that is currently in competition would be an equally good candidate for this program.  Given that all three contenders would make excellent choices (the third is a Venus lander), I'd love to see one or more of them flown under a separate budget.

First, just for fun, check out What's up in the solar system in February 2010



Planetary Focused Discussions


The Planetary Society editorial
The Gish Bar Timeshttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=270899075443508100

General NASA Budget


NASA's budget site
Space.com
Discover (bad astronomy)
Space Politics (I always like to read the comments)
The Martian Chronicles
NASA Watch

Good Budget News

Summary documents for the President's proposed fiscal year 2011 (which starts this coming October) have been posted.  (For international readers, the budget will be modified by both houses of Congress, then the differences reconciled, and then the President will sign the final bill after possible negotiations with Congress.)

There are two good pieces of news.  First, the budget proposes a 10.8% budget increase for 2011 over the 2010 budget.  The the budget proposes to approximately match the inflation rate (presuming a 3% inflation rate).  If this were to continue over a decade, NASA's purchasing power would increase by approximately $1B, or almost enough to pay for a New Frontiers mission.  In a year where flat budgets are proposed for most discretionary spending, this is a substantial increase.  Depending on the priorities set in the Decadal Survey, this budget increase may have been included to begin serious funding of the Jupiter Euorpa Orbiter.

All figures in $Ms.

The second piece of good news is that the budget proposes a series of robotic precursor missions to various solar system locations.  Details on this new program are sketchy at the moment.  Science appears to be a low priority, but for many locations, even a simple camera can lead to new understanding.  It appears that the funding for these missions will come from NASA's Exploration budget, and therefore are in addition to the Planetary budget.

The proposed budget favors Earth Science and the Planetary program among NASA's science program:

Before celebrating, we should see how this proposal fares in Congress.  In a year when a lot of popular programs will be held to flat budgets, raiding programs that are targeted for increases may be popular.

More detail later as additional budget documents become available.

Presentation pages and budget figures are from http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_201_%20Budget_Overview_1_Feb_2010.pdf .  Graph is based on budget figures in this presentation.

What Instruments Cost

In 2007, a science working team published a report on possible science goals for a twenty-teens Mars orbiter and possible small lander. In that report, they discussed a number instruments and their estimated costs. This is the only place where I have seen costs listed for such a wide range of instrument types. The goal of the study was to narrow down goals and instruments to a manageable cost. The result was a proposal for the Mars Trace Gas orbiter, which is now scheduled as an ESA/NASA mission for launch in 2016. At a minimum, that mission would fly the first three instruments on the list for a total instrument cost of ~$71M based on the numbers in the report. There is a strong desire to add a high resolution imager with an instrument cost of $25-45M plus additional costs in the spacecraft.

A couple of caveats. These costs are rough estimates; costs can go up or down by adding or removing capabilities. Also, these costs are likely in 2006 dollars; they likely will rise substantially with a decade's inflation.

Still, I found this list useful in understanding some of the trade offs for mission planning. The saddest trade off I know of was the deletion of the magnetometer from the DAWN asteroid mission when that mission had cost overruns. Theories suggest that the Ceres asteroid may have a subterranean ocean. The magnetometer would have told us by measuring changes in the solar magnetosphere that would be caused by such an ocean. (This was the method used by the Galileo spacecraft to detect oceans in the Galilean moons.) Now, it is probably at least decades before we will know for sure.

Orbiter Instruments

$35M/42kg: solar occultation Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer - Measures trace gases in atmosphere

$35M/35kg: Sub-millimeter spectrometer - Measures trace gases and temperatures

$1M/1kg: “MARCI-like” Camera - Wide angle camera for observing weather patterns; similar designs have flown on previous orbiters

$12M/10kg: Thermal IR or “Lite” spectrometer system - Measure atmospheric dust and ice; could also do spectral mapping of surface composition depending on design (and cost)

$45M/85kg: “HiRISE” Class Imager (HCI) - High resolution imaging of surface at around 30 cm/pixel; would largely be a relight of the highly successful Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera (which keeps the costs down). Any high resolution camera adds other costs to the spacecraft to provide accurate pointing, an ultrastable platform, data storage, and communications.

$25M/20kg: 1-m resolution camera - lower resolution than HiRISE, but would cover larger areas

$5M/1kg: Ultrastable radio oscillator - Gravity measurements

$30M/32kg: Multibeam Lidar Altimeter + Ultra Stable Oscillator - Measure growth and recession of polar ice caps

$30M/30kg: Multi-spectral SWIR/TIR [short wave infrared/thermal infrared] or “Capable” Spectrometer - measure ice and mineral compositions at ~100m resolution

$40M/45kg: Synthetic Aperture Radar - measure terrain up to 3 m below covering sand and soil. Costs and weights assume radar shares the craft's 3m communication antenna; otherwise, an additional 30-40kg and unspecified cost required for a dedicated antenna.

Lander instruments

$5M/3.2kg: Landed Meteorology - local pressure, temperature, winds plus profile of atmosphere above lander via upward looking spectrometers and LiDAR

$8M/2.4kg: Seismometer

$10M/1.5kg: Precision radio tracking - geodesy measurements

$5M/2.4kg: Heat flow instrument

Resources: Mars Science Orbiter (MSO) SAG Report http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/reports/MSO_SAG_report_071006.pdf

Where Mission Dollars Go

We are all familiar with large dollar (or Euro, Yen, rubble, etc.) figures attached to missions for their costs.  Rarely do we see a break down of where mission dollars go.

A presentation on the Mars Astrobiology and Climate Observatory breaks down the costs of one mission proposal.

Breakdown based based on $730M 2011 real year figures

Costs from the mission presentation.  2006 costs were those from a 2006 Mars Scout proposal that were judged to be too low

As with many missions, there are some unique aspects to this mission.  First, there are two nearly identical spacecraft, so there are dollars for extra parts purchases.  However, the nearly identical designs allows the design and testing dollars to be shared across both spacecraft.  I've read that the cost of a second nearly identical craft is around an additional 60%.  (Sometimes I've seen lower figures, but those seem to be for missions that have hot, flight ready spares so duplicate systems and even entire craft are already figured into the base mission costs.)

The MACO mission proposed to fly just three instruments, resulting in fairly low instrument costs.  (I've seen estimates for individual instruments easily top the figure for this mission.)  This mission also has relatively low data rates and moderate pointing costs.  If a high resolution camera were to be added, costs would likely increase significantly to provide the spacecraft stability and aiming to point the camera accurately.  A more capable data storage and communications system would be needed to handle the much larger data stream.

Resources:  The presentation has been uploaded to the web only as a webcast.  You can view the entire webcast (several presentations) here: https://admin.na6.acrobat.com/_a825035659/p94309391/ .  Look for this presentation to begin about 3:10 hours.

A White Paper on this mission was also submitted to the Decadal Survey: http://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/decadal/Kursinski_Dual_Satellite_sign.pdf

Scary Messages

I finally found the time to listen to Ed Weiler's talk in early July on the state of NASA's planetary budget (although the messages are similar for other parts of NASA's science budget except Earth monitoring). The key takeaways:

• NASA's planetary budget has shrunk to approximately half of what it was at the end of the last Decadal Survey (~2003) that set mission priorities
• NASA can now fund about 60% of its Mars program -- hence the joint program in definition with the European Space Agency
• NASA cannot afford an outer planets flagship mission without cannibalizing some or all of the Mars program, the New Frontiers program, and/or the Discovery program
• The loss of the low cost, small Delta 2 launcher will raise the cost of small missions by tens of millions of dollars and potentially a $100M

As a result of these pressures (and if anything, I see the planetary budgt shrinking in the future to fund the manned spaceflight program or to hold down deficits), the program that comes out of the current Decadal Survey may be quite different than the current program.

Resources: Ed Weiler's presentation and Q&A before the Decadal Survey committee

A Look at NASA's Planetary Budget

Correction

Jason Perry asked where the funding for Cassini was in the budget I posted below.  The proposed document I looked at didn't discuss Cassini at all.  I went back to the original Bush administration FY09 budget and found, "Cassini has been transferred to the Outer Planets Program."  This would mean that a substantial portion of the money I "projected" from that line item to future mission development would not be available for building future planetary craft.

I want to re-emphasize that the budget analysis was not meant to be precise -- almost all the guesstimates for future mission costs, for example, are certainly wrong in the details.

Rather, the message is that while $1.3B per year for planetary exploration seems like a large amount, it does not allow for lots of new missions to be added to the roadmap in the coming decade.  Running out existing programs and plans likely will use up available funds unless Congress appropriates a larger budget. 

Original Post

In this blog entry, I'll look at the types of planetary missions that NASA may be able to develop in the coming decade. I'll start with a proposed budget for this current Fiscal Year (FY09) and extrapolate into the future with some educated swag costs of potential missions. 

All figures presented here come from a proposed (not passed) House budget for FY09, which means that many of the specific numbers will change before it becomes law. If you are so inclined, the proposed budget figures can be found buried here. If I understand ESA's budget correctly, it spends about 434M euro (~$555M) for its entire science budget (not including another 585M euro for Earth observations). (ESA's budget figures are not directly comparable to NASA's because ESA's member nations pay for the development of scientific instruments outside of the ESA budget. Science instruments are not a trivial expense, and this likely adds tens of millions of euros to ESA's effective budget.)

What does all this mean for future NASA planetary exploration?

First of all, it is instructional to look at the top line, which is approximately $1.33B for FY09 to development new missions, operating in-flight missions, analyze data from on-going and past missions, and develop new technology for future missions. The development of new missions gets ~$752M or ~57% of the budget and everything else gets ~$575M or ~43% of the budget. That second, "everything else" category is a big bucket of money. When you hear of NASA trying to save money by reducing mission operations for missions past their prime mission, it is because dollars spent on old missions can't be spent for future missions.

Where is the money for future mission development budgeted to go? Here is what's in the proposed budget:

If I understand the implications of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) slip, a good chunk of the outer planet mission money may go to fund the MSL cost overruns. That would be one of the reasons that the Jupiter Europa Orbiter is planned for lauch 11 year hence.

The current fiscal year is merely a snapshot in time. What is perhaps more interesting is to look at what budgets like this might mean for planetary mission development over the next decade. For this exercise, I'll assume that future budgets, adjust for inflation, are approximately the same as current budgets. I'll also make some guesstimates about what several categories of proposed missions would cost in FY09 dollars (an exercise where I'm bound to be wrong in the specifics because the figures I've seen quoted have assumed wildly different base FY years).

If NASA is spending $752M a year to develop new missions, what can it afford over the course of the next decade? Here is one possible breakdown, with assumptions for three Discovery and two New Frontiers missions:

Click in image for larger view. Dollars in $1,000s.

(New Frontiers costs assume $650M for the spacecraft and $100M for the launch vehicle, with the latter a swag.)

As I've said, the details are certainly wrong here. NASA can also decide to change how it allocates money (for example, do fewer Discovery missions to beef up the Mars program). So take this as an example of one possible roadmap constrained by approximately current spending levels. If my analysis has any validity, this allocation of mission development funds seems to mean is that NASA may already be committed to its major planetary mission roadmap for the next decade

- Its Principle Investigator-led missions (Discovery and New Frontiers)

- A Mars program consisting of MSL, ExoMars contribution, and one medium sized mission

- The Jupiter Europa Mission.

It will be interesting to see if the Decadal Survey in progress to plan the roadmap for the next decade will hold to these priorities.

Here is the Planetary Science budget from the proposed FY09 budget referenced above:

Click on image for a larger view. Dollars in $1,000s.

NASA's Planetary Budget

Budgets are likely to be a major point of discussion for future U.S. planetary exploration in the next few months for several reasons: (1) the Mars Science Lab (MSL) budget overrun, (2) a new President with new priorities, (3) a highly unusual mid-year budget, (4) the economic downturn while funding two wars. At the end of the day, planetary exploration is a luxury done by nations with funds not needed for necessities. There are good reasons we do these missions -- fulfill humanity's need to explore, expand scientific knowledge, drive the creation of new technologies, inspire our youth to enter science and engineering careers. Given everything else happening, NASA's budgeting process is likely to be even more bizarre than in most years.

In the United States, the President proposes a budget, but the Congress actually appropriates the money. (There's also a step, not done in all years of Congress authorizing a budget that is usually different than both the President's request and the final appropriation. Basically, the authorization is meaningless legally and financially but it allows politicians to show their support for programs without having to give them any money.) The President's budget proposal is delivered every year in late January or early February. Congress is supposed to then appropriate money by the start of the next fiscal year (FY) on October 1. Budget disagreements in recent years, however, have been so great that for many programs Congress has simply passed a continuing resolution that says the program will be funded at the previous year's level. NASA currently is operating on such a resolution, which has kept FY09 spending on the planetary program at FY08's $1,158M level instead of the President's proposed $1,330M level. This represents a funding cut of 13% below what NASA expected to carry out its planetary program.

In a possibly unique move, Congress has said that it will revisit the appropriation for all government agencies operating under a continuing resolution next March once the new President has made his priorities clear. The budget for the planetary program could remain at FY08 levels, go up, or go down. (My guess is that there would be little change. NASA is small potatoes compared to the rest of the budget.)

All of this makes it crazy hard I'm sure for NASA's managers to operate in in normal years, and even more so now that they know they have to make room for an additional $400M in MSL funding in the next two fiscal years.

Here is how NASA had planned its future spending last winter based on the President's proposal. This is from a presentation by James Green last March to OPAG. My apologies that the slide is clipped; it is that way in the posted presentation.



Eyeballing the chart, it appears that the funding wedge planned for the Mars program in FY10 and FY11 would almost cover the additional funds needed by MSL. After this chart was presented, NASA decided to push out the development of the next outer planet flagship mission, which (again by eyeballing the chart) partially covers the funding loss caused by operating under a continuing resolution instead of a larger appropriated budget. Taking funds from either the Juno or GRAIL missions looks like it could be counter productive. It looks like both enter their full development this year. If their launch is delayed, the development teams need to be kept together, potentially increasing their cost dramatically. (The time to delay a mission is before the peak funding and staffing occurs. )

These funding wedge charts may seem boring, but they are at the core of future mission planning. An agency has x dollars or euros (or name your favorite currency) to plan to spend for each year and the mission development and operations occur over a span of many years. What makes these charts so dynamic is that the funds expected to be available change yearly (in the U.S.; ESA has multi-year budgets and I don't know about other agencies) and the funds needed by missions change as they develop (for example, MSL's cost overrun). An agency can only commit to a new mission when a funding wedge becomes available and sometimes must cancel a mission when a funding wedge disappears.