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Making The Discovery, Exploration And Application Of Space Science Missions Easier

Artwork of the MESSENGER probe to Mercury.
by Bruce Moomaw
Cameron Park (CA) (SPX) Mar 29, 2007
As I said in my last entry, Dan Goldin's use of the "Smaller and More Frequent" philosophy for space science missions gave the scientific exploration of space a useful second wind -- especially as applied to the Discovery and Explorer programs, in which a series of small Solar System probes (for Discovery) or Earth-orbiting scientific satellites (for Explorer) were to be very frequently launched, each mission under a low pre-announced cost cap, with the specific missions being selected from a wide range of different scientific proposals sent to NASA by various competing teams of scientists and engineers.

This worked quite well for a while -- including the first two competitively selected Discovery missions.

But now even this philosophy is starting to hit the limits of its usefulness, precisely as a result of its own past success. The number of new and really important space-science discoveries that can be made with small, cheap spacecraft at this point is simply, and inevitably, decreasing.

In another decade or two, new technological inventions will further lower the cost of unmanned space missions (in fact, that's one of the many advantages they have over manned ones). But scientists are demanding that scientifically exciting new missions be flown right now, without such a cost-lowering wait -- and the strain is now showing.

Of the last six Discovery missions selected, one (Genesis) was a partial failure and one (CONTOUR) was a total failure, arguably because of inadequate money spent on their design and testing. Of the other four, only one -- Deep Impact -- managed to avoid going over its original cost cap, and then only very narrowly.

Two others (Messenger and Kepler) did go over their cost caps -- in Kepler's case by fully 72% -- and are still in business only because NASA violated its solemnly sworn oath to cancel any mission that did go over the cost cap that had been declared when the missions were originally selected.

The last one, Dawn, was actually cancelled twice and then reinstated under pressure, and has stayed alive only by dumping a large part of its originally planned science payload and by having one of its manufacturers agree to swallow part of its cost increase.

NASA's next attempt to select new Discovery missions ended in flat-out disaster -- out of a couple of dozen proposals, NASA was unable to find a single scientifically worthwhile one that was likely to succeed while staying under the new, higher cost cap of $360 million.

After Congress (following a year's worth of wrangling), finally raised the cap still further to $425 million, NASA's next proposal submission did turn up three acceptable finalists, which are now being appraised.

But one of those -- the "OSIRIS" mission to return a sample to Earth from a near-Earth asteroid -- is already within a mere $10 million of the new cost cap; and, given the way virtually all space missions cost more than originally thought, it's very likely to end up busting the cap. Nor is it easy to see any way in which this particular mission could be downscaled or simplified to cut its cost again.

And of the other two -- which are cheaper -- the "VESPER" Venus atmospheric orbiter would to a large extent duplicate the research already being done by Europe's "Venus Express" orbiter; while the "GRAIL" mission to map the Moon's gravity field with great precision from orbit is rather specialized and limited in the amount of useful new science it could provide.

NASA's new Mars Scout program to apply the same low-cost, competitively selected philosophy to some of the exploration of Mars has run into the same problem.

The first Mars Scout mission -- the "Phoenix" polar lander scheduled to take off this August -- was picked largely because it was the only one of the four finalists that could make use of a spacecraft that had already been built for a cancelled 2001 Mars mission, greatly lowering its cost. And even then, it's come alarmingly close to the cost cap.

Even after the Mars Scout cost cap was then raised all the way up to $475 million, not a single one of those other three finalists made it into the finalist round for the second Scout mission in 2011.

Instead, the two new Scout finalists are both small, relatively simple orbiters designed to study the very specialized subject of Mars' upper atmospheric structure -- which, until then, was supposed to be fully studied using only part of the instruments on the bigger "Mars Science Orbiter" that's still set for 2013 (and which must be flown anyway because it doubles as a comsat for future Mars landers).

And when NASA finally tried to apply the same competitive cost-cutting technique, based on the philosophy of flexible market competition, to a more expensive bunch of spacecraft -- the New Frontiers program of middling-cost Solar System missions -- the same problem reared its ugly head yet again, which will be the subject of my next chapter.

Bruce Moomaw is our first "Space Blogger" at www.spaceblogger.com Feel free to create an account on SpaceBlogger and discuss this issue and more with Bruce and friends.

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A Faster Way To Less Funding Woes
Cameron Park CA (SPX) Mar 26, 2007
NASA's funding problems remain serious, even though the new Democratic Congress had made it clear that it's willing to take huge chunk out of President Bush's desired funding for his "Vision for Space Exploration" in order to cover the financial problems of all the rest of NASA (including the extremely dubious Shuttle/Station project).







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