A Checkup on Future Mars Missions

NASA’s Mars Exploration Analysis Group (MEPAG) recently reviewed plans by Europe, the Japanese, and the U.S. for future Mars exploration.  The prognosis is for another kick ass decade of Mars exploration.

We have enjoyed two decades of increasingly more focused exploration of Mars.  After a lull of twenty years, the 1996 Mars Pathfinder lander began what has became a flotilla of orbiters, landers, and rovers to examine the Red Planet in increasing detail.  Missions in flight or in development will explore the processes that are stripping away the atmosphere, measure its trace gases, and study the interior of another planet for the first time.  Two missions will land rovers to poke and prod two locations in detail.  This is in addition to the three orbiters and two rovers currently exploring this world.  Only for our moon do we have such a rich understanding of another world.

The MEPAG meeting last month included the usual program review, but it also coincided with the second workshop in the long selection process for the landing site for NASA’s 2020 rover mission.  In this post, I’ll share highlights from the two meetings. (You can read the presentations here.)

Credit: J. Green, NASA

The European Space Agency (ESA) has an active Mars program with the Mars Express orbiter currently at Mars, two ExoMars missions in development, and planning under way to select follow on missions.  It will jointly develop and fly the two ExoMars missions with the Russian space agency Roscosmos.  The first, set to launch in 2016, will have an orbiter that will focus on atmospheric chemistry and dynamics along with a small European technology demonstration lander.  The second, to launch in 2018, will deliver a highly capable rover and station that will search for signs of past or present life.

The current tensions between the US and Russia over the Ukraine have the potential for disrupting these missions.  NASA plans to deliver its Electra communications package for the 2016 orbiter that will allow it to relay data from surface landers and rovers back to Earth.  Both ESA’s 2018 ExoMars rover and NASA’s 2020 rover missions plan to use the ESA orbiter to relay data back to Earth.  Because Russia will launch the mission, shipping equipment to Russia with the current political tensions over Ukraine may prove difficult.  With launch just two years away, there’s little time to recover from any delays if they occur.  NASA also plans to deliver a key parts of one of the 2018 rover’s instruments, but there is more time to deal with that issue.

Other highlights from the ESA presentations:

• Both the 2016 and 2018 missions are on track other than the potential export issue (although no mention was made of whether or not funding has been fully secured for the 2018 mission which has been an open question).
• Russia is still scheduled to provide the key entry, descent, and landing system for the 2018 rover.  This will be a major project for a space agency that hasn’t had a successful planetary mission in decades.
• Russia plans to host a surface station in the 2018 lander platform for long-term studies of the atmosphere and geophysics of Mars.  Instrument selection will begin this spring.
• ESA is considering three missions to follow the 2018 rover.  The current favorite, Phootprint, which might launch in 2024, would be a possible third joint mission with Russia and would return a sample from the Martian moon Phobos.  Other options would be for three small geophysical landers to establish a network to study Mars interior or a small rover to explore a new region of Mars.

Japan’s space agency, JAXA, is considering several mission options for a future Mars mission, but has no currently approved Mars missions.  (It’s only previous attempt to reach Mars, the NOZOMI orbiter, failed.)  For its next try, JAXA’s managers are considering several small missions including an engineering demonstration to use the atmosphere to slow the spacecraft to enter orbit (aerocapture), an airplane to survey magnetic anomalies this will provide clues on Mars’ ancient but now defunct magnetic field, and a meteorological station or seismic station.  The presenter, however, spent the most time describing the most ambitious concept, a rover that would be smaller than the Opportunity rover at ~60 kilograms.  Two goals for the rover were described in some depth – an environmental package to study dust movement by the atmosphere (including dust devils) and a relatively simple microscope that would use fluorescence to detect biosignatures in the soil.  Launch would be sometime in the 2020s.

A presentation on the NASA MAVEN mission that will study loss of the atmosphere into space gave the good news that all is well with the craft.  It arrives at Mars on September 21^st this year. 

The Europeans and Russians will not have the only mission to Mars in 2016.  NASA’s InSight geophysics station will launch that year to study the interior of Mars.  The lander also will carry a capable weather station to enable scientists to determine the influence of temperature and winds on its measurements.  The InSight mission has always planned to carry a camera to aid in instrument deployment, with one panorama planned early in the mission.  The project will attempt to replace the currently planned black and white camera with a color camera, but there are no promises.  The mission development is proceeding well and the team has received permission to start hardware development following an in-depth review of the design.

The InSight Mission will greatly enhance our understanding of the interior or Mars. Credit: M. Golombek, B. Banerdt, JPL/Caltech

The focus for the two meetings, though, was NASA’s 2020 rover.  Like the Curiosity rover currently on Mars, the 2020 rover will pursue the question of whether Mars could have hosted life in the past (or even in the present).   While the Curiosity rover does that only with the scientific instruments it carried to Mars, the 2020 rover also will select and cache 25+ rock and soil samples that could be returned to Earth for study with much more sensitive instruments in terrestrial laboratories. 

Credit: B. Ehlmann, JPL/Caltech

In addition to exploring a site in terms of its past habitability, a well chosen site could also allow studies related to the key questions for Mars identified by the Decadal Survey that set priorities for solar system exploration.  The 'Noachian' era was the earliest on Mars when abundant surface water may have created conditions suitable for life.  Credit: B. Ehlmann, JPL/Caltech

NASA plans to build and fly the 2020 mission for just half the cost of the Curiosity mission, adjusted for expected inflation.   The need to collect samples and control costs will ripple through portions of the mission plans.  (An additional new goal, to gather measurements and test hardware that would be useful to a future human mission will also drive some changes.)

One portion of the mission that will be familiar will be the design of the rover and the hardware that delivers it to Mars.  NASA believes that up to 90% of the Curiosity mission’s design (by mass) can be reused (which enables a highly capable mission at bargain price).  Some changes will fulfill the new mission requirements (for example, the caching hardware) and others will apply lessons gained in operating Curiosity (for example, beefier wheels after Curiosity’s showed unexpected early wear). 

The instrument suite the 2020 rover will carry is likely to be substantially different than Curiosity’s.  Curiosity carries instruments that both can make quick measurements to rapidly assess the geology of a location and a highly capable laboratory that can make detailed measurements.  The latter, though, is costly both in dollars and in the time needed to make the measurements.  In almost two years of operation, Curiosity has collected just three samples for its laboratory instruments.  In that same time for the 2020 mission, scientists want to fill most or all of their cache.  As a result, the 2020 rover may carry only rapid assessment instruments in addition to its caching system (although technology advances may mean that some will be much more capable than their Curiosity equivalents).   NASA is expected to announce the instrument selection this July. 

The desire to cache samples also is leading scientists to prize the diversity in evaluating landing sites.  Scientists want its samples to represent the broadest range of ancient environments and processes as possible.  While almost half of the Martian crust is older than 3.7 billion years when life might have formed (compared to less than 1% for the Earth), many of those locations would provide limited diversity within the range a rover could explore.  (Many also would be unsafe to land at.)

The NE Syrtis Major site (second from the bottom) has a wide range of diversity.  This chart is a draft and may change as the diversity of other sites is further assessed.  Credit: B. Ehlmann, JPL/Caltech

At the end of the landing site workshop, the participants held a straw vote to indicate which sites they found most compelling.  The winner, located on the northeast edge of the plains of Syrtis Major, illustrates the diversity they would like to find.   Within a few kilometers, this site provides access to samples that record key stages of Mars’ early evolution:

• Blocks of rocks hurled from nearby massive impacts record the early bombardment of the terrestrial planets by comets and asteroids.  These are also convenient samples of the ancient crust delivered from outside the landing zone.
• Ancient crust with minerals preserving the record of the early wet environments of Mars that may have provided conditions for life to develop or at least that record biotic precursors.  The NE Syrtis Major site has an unusually wide range of aqueous minerals that suggest a diversity of environments that came and went across millions of years as the climate dried out.
• A nearby volcanic flow represents the massive volcanism that covered large areas of the planet in its early history.  These rocks could record the chemistry of Mars’ ancient mantle, provide clues on when Mars’ ancient magnetic field shut down, and in terrestrial laboratories provide unambiguous dating of a wide-scale event to calibrate dating of Mars’ early history.

Location of the proposed NE Syrtis Major landing site.  Credit: J. Mustard, Brown University

The proposed NE Syrtis Major landing site includes geologic formations from the two most ancient eras on Mars, the Noachian and the Hesperian.  The site has remnants from ancient impacts, several types of aqueous minerals, and access to volcanic rock formations.  Credit: J. Mustard, Brown University

At this point, NASA is not looking to rule out any of the nearly thirty sites that have been proposed.  While the NE Syrtis Major site won the initial beauty contest, other sites may prove to be more desirable with further analysis.

While NASA doesn’t need to select the 2002 mission’s landing site until 2019, two factors are pushing it to evaluate sites early.  One is that high resolution mapping of the sites for geologic sites and landing hazards requires the sharp-eyed cameras of the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter.   That spacecraft reached Mars in 2006, and NASA wants to make maximum use of it while it remains healthy and has an adequate fuel supply.

The mission’s engineers also want an early look at the most desirable landing sites to determine whether the 2020 rover will need a significant upgrade in its landing system.  The closest the mission’s operators currently can target the lander is to an ellipse 25 by 20 kilometers.  A simple design change can reduce that ellipse area by 40%.  Unfortunately, the richest sites for exploration often don’t have the smooth surfaces needed to ensure a safe landing within their landing ellipses.  The Curiosity rover, for example, will spend more than two years getting from its safe landing site to the starting point for its actual target area.  (Fortunately, there’s been great science along the way.)

For the 2020 mission, NASA would like to avoid another long road trip at the start of the mission.  If the sites of greatest interest turn out to turn out to have hazards, then NASA will consider a technology called Terrain Relative Navigation (TRN).  With TRN, the landing system will compare images taken during the final descent against a stored map of safe landing zones.  It will then steer the landing to one of those safe harbors.  Without TRN, a mission to the NE Syrtis Major site, for example, has an 87% chance of a safe landing; with TRN the chance of safe landing increases to over 98%.  However, the TRN technology would be expensive to develop and test.  NASA wants to know that it is likely to be needed before committing to it for a mission that’s already being done on a bargain budget.

The two meetings showed that despite an incredible run over the last couple of decades, for Mars the best may still be to come.

Note: All the presentations promoting landing sites from the landing site workshop are available on-line.  If you’re not a geologist, you may want to read Emily Lakdawalla’s posts on Mars’ geologic eras and on key minerals that suggest past aqueous environments.  Wikipedia also has articles on the Noachian era and  its successor the Hesperian era during which Mars’ surface transitioned from an impact ridden world, to one with possible abundant surface water, and then progressively dried out.  The 2020 mission is likely to focus on sites that contain remnants from one or both of these eras (as the NE Syrtis Major site does).

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.

2015 Budget Micro-management of the Best Kind

The US House of Representatives has just released the details of its draft proposed NASA budget for Fiscal Year 2015 (starting October 1 of this year).  For planetary science it is good news all around.  In fact, it’s great news because the proposed spending bill micro-manages NASA’s budget to bring NASA’s planetary program closer to the plan laid out in the scientific community’s Decadal Report outlining goals for the coming decade. 

While it is easy to become cynical about politics, it is clear that in this case the politicians and their staffs from both parties on the subcommittee that wrote this draft budget are familiar with the details of the planetary program and are following the scientific community’s lead.  Instead of giving unfunded mandates, all the changes they request are accompanied by proposed increases above the President’s budget proposal.

Missions to Europa would be the big winners in the draft budget bill.  Credit: NASA/JPL/Ted Stryk

	President's Budget	House Draft Budget	Change
Planetary Science Research and Analysis	$165.4M	$170	+$4.6
Discovery	$230.8	$266	+$35.2
New Frontiers	$281.5	$286	+$4.5
Mars Exploration	$279.3	$302	+$32.7
Outer Planets	$95.7	$181	+$85.3
Technology	$137.2	$155	+$17.8
Total Budget	$1,280.3	$1,450	+$169.7

Changes to the President’s budget request in the draft House budget bill in millions of dollars.  Courtesy of Casey Drier at the Planetary Society

In this post, I’ll let the House subcommittee speak for itself through key quotes from the proposed budget bill (starting on page 67).  For the larger context of the budget in Washington’s politics, I encourage you to read Casey Drier’s post at the Planetary Society blog.

“NASA’s request for Planetary Science once again represents a substantial decrease below appropriated levels and would have a negative impact on both planned and existing missions. The recommended funding levels [in this bill] attempt to rectify this problem by supporting both the formulation and development of new Planetary Science missions and the extension of all healthy operating missions that continue to generate good scientific output.”

- The budget provides the funds to continue operating all NASA missions that are currently operating.  The President’s proposed budget did not have funds for either the Mars Opportunity rover or the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.  Money is also provided to continue the Cassini mission at Saturn, which was also included in the President’s budget request.

…”$302,000,000 for Mars Exploration, of which not less than $100,000,000 is for a Mars Rover 2020 that meets scientific objectives laid out in the most recent Planetary Science decadal survey.”

 – This is a modest $8M increase over the President’s budget.  The key requirement is that the rover must meet the requirements laid out in the Decadal Survey, which means that that it must be capable of selecting and caching samples for a possible return to Earth for studies in terrestrial laboratories.  This has been NASA’s plan, but the final payload – the ultimate expression of the mission’s goals – hasn’t been announced, and this is the House’s way of ensuring that NASA follows through.

“The recommendation also provides $266,000,000 for Discovery, of which not less than $30,000,000 is for Future Discovery Missions. The Committee notes that NASA allowed a four year gap to develop between the release of the last Discovery Announcement of Opportunity (AO) in fiscal year 2010 and the expected release of the next AO in fiscal year 2014 (a gap which would have been worse were it not for additional resources provided by the Congress). In order to prevent the recurrence of such a gap in the future and to firmly establish the 24 month mission cadence recommended by the Planetary Science decadal survey, NASA shall ensure that the planned 2017 Discovery AO is issued instead during fiscal year 2016.”

- Selecting Discovery missions every two years instead of every five would significantly enhance the number of planetary missions NASA flies.  The bill adds $30M to the Discovery budget to accelerate the rate at which missions are flown.  This will be big news if the Senate follows suite and this is part of the final budget law.

“For Outer Planets, the recommendation provides $181,000,000, of which not less than $100,000,000 is for a Europa Clipper or comparable mission that meets the scientific objectives laid out in the most recent Planetary Science decadal survey and can be launched in 2021. This funding shall support the completion of science definition, the selection of a mission concept, the release of an instrument AO and other necessary pre-formulation and formulation activities for the Europa mission. While NASA has dedicated some fiscal year 2014 Europa funding to studying the possibility of conducting this mission within a $1,000,000,000 cost cap, the Committee has not seen any credible evidence that such a cost cap is feasible and directs NASA not to use further project resources in pursuit of such an unlikely outcome.”

- The House subcommittee that wrote this budget language continues to strongly support a highly capable mission to Europa.  NASA has formally requested proposals for a mission that would cost half as much as the proposed $2B Europa Clipper mission, but that likely would do much less science that specified in the Decadal Survey.  It will be interesting to see if the Senate includes similar language in its version of NASA’s budget.  If this language survives into the final budget, this will be a strong directive to NASA to plan for a highly capable Europa mission.

“For Planetary Science Technology, …$18,000,000 shall be for assessments and development of promising technologies and techniques for the study and characterization of the surface and subsurface of Europa, including such technologies as landers, rovers, penetrators, submersibles, seismometers and sample analyzers.”

- The House subcommittee really likes Europa.  A mission to land on Europa would have to follow the Europa Clipper mission that would scout possible landings sites.  This is an investment in technology for a mission that isn’t likely to fly until the 2030s.

2015 Planetary Science Proposed Budget – Steady as she goes and then big changes

The President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2015 budget details were released this week.  For the next several years, the budget proposes a steady as she goes plan (but with two “what are they thinking?” surprises).  Then as the current missions in development head to the launch pad, the budget suggests major changes that would dramatically remake the mix of missions that would launch in the next decade.

The broad outlines of the proposed NASA budget have been widely reported.  I’ve gone through the proposed budget and found a move to a very different mix of missions that I haven’t seen reported elsewhere.  To start with the big picture, here are the highlights:

Status quo for missions in flight or under development except that the Mars Opportunity rover and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter missions could end on September 30. 

NASA is recommitting to a vigorous Discovery mission program, but its plans for filling out the rest of its mission portfolio leading into the next decade are unknown. 

Selection of future New Frontiers missions is suspended indefinitely. 

While the Administration finally includes some money to consider options for a budget Europa mission, it’s a one shot affair with no mission development expected until the 2020s.

The President’s budget generally proposes little change in NASA’s science programs for the rest of the decade.  A $65M cut is proposed for the Planetary Science program for FY15, which equals the change in the amount proposed for studying a mission to Europa from FY14.  Solid lines are actual spending, dashed lines projected spending.

Before we look at the details, I’ll provide some background information on the budgeting process.

1. The President’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) annually prepares a budget proposal for the next year.  The proposal contains two sets of numbers: the proposed spending for the next fiscal year (October 1 to September 30) and a notional budget for the following four years (through FY19 in this proposal) that agency managers use to plan multiyear programs.
2. Each house of Congress then passes its own version of the budget, which are reconciled between the two.  The President must sign the congressionally approved budget for it to become law, giving OMB significant negotiating power with Congress.
3. The final signed budget law will expire on September 30, 2015.  NASA’s managers must spend to match the budget (with some wiggle room) for that fiscal year.   However, they cannot start any multi-year program that isn’t also shown in the President’s out year notional budget.

To understand the impact of the budget on future planetary exploration (the focus of this blog), I've learned to look at three sets of numbers: Funding for missions in flight, funding for missions in development, and funding to start development of future missions.

Funding for missions in flight

Proposed funding for missions in flight (or in the case of GRAIL, just completed).  The budget for operating the Cassini mission isn’t reported separately, and the figures shown are approximate.

The President’s budget proposes to fund all missions in flight with two exceptions.  The first key change in this budget from last year is that the new proposal includes full funding for the Cassini orbiter at Saturn through the planned end of its mission (and fuel) in 2017.  This would mean that the final orbits close to the rings and atmosphere will occur.  As recently as last summer, funding for the Cassini mission past 2015 was in doubt.

Other missions are either funded throughout the five year budget projection (the Curiosity rover, for example), until their expected end of life (the MESSENGER Mercury orbiter), or until the end of their originally planned missions when they will be eligible to justify further funding for extended missions (New Horizons).

The other key change to this portion of the budget, however, is the proposal for premature termination of the Opportunity rover and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission.  Both missions are producing good science, and the budget document doesn’t explain why funding isn’t proposed.  In addition to the main budget, the President proposed a supplemental budget enhancement that would be funded through new taxes that would fund both of these missions (among many other programs).  This supplement is given no chance of passage by the current Congress.  Continuing these two missions, then, depends on Congress adding funds to support them in next year’s budget (quite possibly taken from elsewhere in NASA’s budget since NASA’s total budget is unlikely to change much under the two year budget compromise worked out last year by the two political parties).

Proposing to not continue funding the popular and still very productive Opportunity rover is one of the two, “I can’t imagine what they were thinking,” lines in the budget.  I hope that Congress will overturn this.  (I also disagree with not continuing the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter which is still producing good science, but it doesn’t have the popular following of Opportunity.)

Funding for missions in development

The budget would fully fund development of the three approved NASA missions in development.  Funding is proposed to continue evaluating options for a possible Europa mission that may be developed in the 2020s and for future Discovery program missions.  Solid lines are approved missions, dashed line are funding for expected future missions.

The proposed budget would also fully fund the planetary missions that NASA has in development: the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return, the InSight Mars geophysical station, and the 2020 Mars rover mission.  Funding is also included for NASA’s contributions to the European Space Agency’s Bepi-Colombo Mercury orbiter, the 2016 ExoMars orbiter and 2018 rover, and the JUICE Jupiter-Ganymede orbiter.

Funding to start development of future missions

By the end of the decade, NASA would be completing development of the Mars 2020 rover and developing new Discovery-program missions.  No new missions in the New Frontiers or Outer Planets programs are foreseen in the budget for the rest of this decade.  Solid lines are actual spending, dashed lines projected spending.

By funding most missions in flight and continuing development of missions already approved, the budget is largely status quo.  The radical changes to NASA’s program would come for the missions that will follow these.

NASA’s mission strategy has been to fly a mixture of mission that fall into different cost classes.  Some scientific priorities require expensive, highly capable spacecraft, such as the 2020 Mars rover in development.  NASA refers to these missions as Flagships that would cost $1.5B to $2.5B.  (More expensive Flagship missions were flown in the past.)  Flagship missions would do the difficult, high priority studies that simply can’t be done more cheaply.   The expectation has been that one or two Flagship missions would be developed per decade, with missions to Europa and Uranus (in that order) having the highest priority. 

NASA has a second mission class for high priority studies that can be done more cheaply ($700M to $1B), known as the New Frontiers program.   In the past, this program was used to develop the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto, the Juno orbiter en route to study the interior of Jupiter, and the OSIRIS-REx  asteroid sample return mission that is in development.  For the future, the scientific community has prioritized a Venus lander, a Saturn atmospheric probe, a Trojan asteroid tour and rendezvous, a comet surface sample return, and a Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin sample return for this program.   The expectation had been that New Frontiers missions would be selected every five to seven years.  As recently as last summer, NASA was planning to select the fourth mission in the series in the next year or two. 

Discovery program missions cost approximately $450M and are competitively chosen from proposals submitted by scientific teams to study any solar system body except the sun and Earth.  (NASA has other programs to study those two bodies.)  NASA originally selected Discovery missions every two years, but that has been stretched to every five years recently.

The new budget proposal would radically shift the mixture of mission classes for the future.  The budget for the Discovery program would be ramped up to a level that would again allow selection of missions every two years.  (In a past meeting, Jim Green, head of NASA’s Planetary Science program, has said that a budget of ~$350M would support starting a Discovery mission every two years.)  However, the budget states that after the launch of the OSIRIS-REx mission, the budget for the budget for the New Frontiers program drops to near zero and no money is foreseen up to 2019 to develop future missions.  (It is silent about whether New Frontiers missions might be selected after that.)

The proposed budget also doesn’t foresee any new Flagship missions to be started before 2019 and looks to see if the highest priority future Flagship mission could be descoped to the equivalent of a New Frontiers mission.  The approach proposed in the budget is the second case where I am left scratching my head wondering what the thinking is.   Thanks to generous funding added by Congress in the last two budgets, NASA has extensively studied a ~$2B proposed mission called the Europa Clipper.  For the FY15 budget, NASA proposes to spend $15M (a substantial cut from last year’s $80M inserted into the budget by Congress for Europa mission studies) to assess the potential for a $1B Europa mission.  Testing different cost points to learn what each could provide is a smart management move.  What doesn’t make sense is that the budget proposes to spend $15M next year, and then nothing for a Europa mission until possibly sometime in the 2020s.  The engineers who will study the descoped mission will have moved on to other projects or retired; technologies available today will be obsolete.  So why bother? 

While Congress has strongly supported doing a Europa mission earlier than the 2020s, it can’t force the formal start of development on a new mission.  Congressional budgets expire every September 30^th.  To start development on a new mission, NASA needs both for its budget to show proposed budgets in future years to complete the development and for Congress to appropriate the funds for that development each year.  Under the proposed budget, we would have one more year of studies and then nothing for perhaps another decade. 

This budget proposal presents almost no vision for NASA’s planetary program following the completion of the missions currently in development.  No money would be spent to prepare for a Flagship mission to launch in the 2020s.  The Outer Planets program shrinks to near zero, and the same for the New Frontiers program.  In the proposed budget, the only firm plan for the following decade appears to be a robust program of Discovery missions, but that alone isn’t enough for a robust planetary science program.

Unless the Planetary Science budget suffers a severe cut at the turn of the next decade, funds should be available for a relatively rich program.  By my back of the envelope calculations, continuing the current budget (with inflation adjustments) would support development of the $2B Europa Clipper, a New Frontiers mission, and five Discovery missions in the 2020s.  Alternatively, NASA could fund three New Frontiers-class missions (including perhaps, a budget Europa mission) and five Discovery missions.  However, preparing to fly these missions requires funding in advance of mission selection to have robust programs ready.

My take is that the new budget proposal is an interim document when it comes to preparing for the next decade’s missions.  The President’s budget managers have placed a low priority on planetary science compared to other NASA programs, and the program’s budget has suffered substantial cuts as a result.  This is the first budget proposal in several years that shows essentially flat spending into the future instead of new cuts.  NASA’s managers likely are revamping their expectations for the planetary program given the new budget realities.  We haven’t heard (and NASA may well not know) what mission portfolio it plans to support in the future within that reality.

The proposed FY15 budget is the first in several years that doesn’t propose substantial cuts in future years compared to the previous year’s budget.  Lines for each fiscal year show what spending was expected in that budget for the next five years.