Author Topic: Proposed Europa Missions  (Read 641056 times)

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #360 on: 04/28/2014 02:54 am »
An interesting idea suggested by Andrew LePage involves a Europa-Io Sample Return by flying through the plumes of each respective moon:

I read that a couple of weeks ago and although it is an interesting idea, I think he misses a key point--the U.S. scientific community said to go to Europa and do specific kinds of science. The community did not say go to Europa and collect samples from the plumes. Now if somebody wants to propose doing that with a Discovery class mission they are free to do so (good luck at fitting that in the cost cap). But it is not a recommended New Frontiers mission, nor is it a recommended flagship mission and therefore should not, and will not get funded out of those budgets.

Put another way, that sample return mission has not been recommended or vetted by the U.S. scientific community. And the way things work in the U.S. is that only science missions that are vetted get the necessary money to proceed.

And once again this highlights the key fact: what is important is not where you go, but what you do when you get there. The recent discussion of a Europa mission has sometimes lost sight of the fact that the reason that scientists said to go to Europa in the first place is to do specific science there, not to simply say that "we've gone to Europa." It's about science, not planting a flag. There's no point in doing the mission at all unless it focuses on the important science.
« Last Edit: 04/28/2014 08:12 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #361 on: 04/28/2014 03:02 am »
1-Second, funding issues.  Bolden has already admitted he's bite at a billion dollar probe, so odds now favor a scheme that fits a New Frontier budget. 

2-Four, science.  Of course we want more photos in better detail, and answers to the ocean and life enigmas.  But when you say you have a piece of that moon, you'll get an avalanche of eager scientists storming in.  A few samples of ocean salt won't answer everything, but it will definitely help answer some of the bigger questions around Europa.

1-Bolden doesn't really matter in this (and in fact, his comments are somewhat out of tune with the comments made by Grunsfeld and others). It ultimately comes down to OMB, Congress, and the scientific community. All three matter in this issue, and I'd note that if a significant part of the scientific community comes out and says "a plume sampling mission is not worth the cost of doing it and is no substitute for flagship-class science," then the political support will evaporate. As I heard one senior person put it, it's better to wait an extra decade and do the mission right than to do a lousy mission now and then have to try again two decades after that.

2-That's really looking at the science issues in a weird way. A sample return mission would provide particles. That's not going to satisfy the people interested in the geology, the water circulation, the entire Europa system dynamics. That's like saying to a weatherman "We could not afford to give you a satellite that will show where the hurricanes and tornadoes are, but here are a few raindrops instead. I'm sure you'll be happy with these."

There's a framework that has been developed over many decades: flyby, orbit, land, rove. Skipping all those steps to go straight to sample return doesn't produce the scientific knowledge that justifies spending the money in the first place.
« Last Edit: 04/28/2014 02:56 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #362 on: 04/29/2014 06:19 pm »
http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/house-appropriators-propose-substantial-increase-for-nasa-including-europa

House Appropriators Propose Substantial Increase for NASA, Including Europa
Marcia S. Smith
Posted: 29-Apr-2014
Updated: 29-Apr-2014 02:08 PM

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of the FY2015 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that will be marked up by the CJS subcommittee tomorrow (April 30).   It proposes a substantial increase for NASA compared to the President's request and funding for a robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa would be one beneficiary of the increased spending.

SNIP

The funding figures in the House CJS subcommittee draft bill are as follows

    Science:   $5,193 million.  That is $221 million more than the President requested, and $42 million more than the FY2014 amount.  Of the $5,193 million, $100 million is for the Europa mission.  The President requested $15 million for FY2015.   The President requested zero for Europa in FY2013 and FY2014, but Congress appropriated $75 million in FY2013 (subject to rescissions and the sequester, which left about $69 million) and $80 million in FY2014.

Offline redliox

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2539
  • Illinois USA
  • Liked: 683
  • Likes Given: 97
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #363 on: 04/29/2014 08:20 pm »
It looks like NASA will be taking a look at cheaper missions soon: http://www.space.com/25672-jupiter-moon-europa-nasa-mission-ideas.html

Quote
NASA is asking the scientific community to help it devise a relatively low-budget mission to Jupiter's moon Europa, perhaps the solar system's best bet to host alien life.

The space agency announced Monday (April 28) that it has issued a Request for Information (RFI), officially seeking ideas from outside researchers for a mission to study Europa and its subsurface ocean for less than $1 billion (excluding the launch vehicle).

"This is an opportunity to hear from those creative teams that have ideas on how we can achieve the most science at minimum cost," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington, said in a statement.

"Europa is one of the most interesting sites in our solar system in the search for life beyond Earth," Grunsfeld added. "The drive to explore Europa has stimulated not only scientific interest but also the ingenuity of engineers and scientists with innovative concepts."

The deadline to submit ideas under the RFI is May 30, officials said.

So come June there'll at least be a few ideas on the table in addition to Europa Clipper.  The increase in Planetary Science is excellent but without that full $2 billion for 'Clipper we need to find what other options are possible.  Whatever those options will be the Decadal Survey that recommended Europa to begin with may be the guide (although naturally a smaller mission might only sate a few goals):

Quote
The Decadal Survey deemed a mission to the Jupiter moon as among the highest priority scientific pursuits for NASA. It lists five key science objectives in priority order that are necessary to improve our understanding of this potentially habitable moon.

The mission will need 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, identify and characterize candidate sites for future detailed exploration

• Understand Europa's space environment and interaction with the magnetosphere.

So, going by priority, finding the depth and extent of the subsurface ocean comes first followed by chemistry.
« Last Edit: 04/29/2014 08:27 pm by redliox »
"Let the trails lead where they may, I will follow."
-Tigatron

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #364 on: 04/29/2014 09:44 pm »
So come June there'll at least be a few ideas on the table in addition to Europa Clipper.  The increase in Planetary Science is excellent but without that full $2 billion for 'Clipper we need to find what other options are possible.  Whatever those options will be the Decadal Survey that recommended Europa to begin with may be the guide (although naturally a smaller mission might only sate a few goals):


I thought that the explanation as to what is going on appeared earlier in the thread.

This is OMB pushing the issue. OMB wants NASA to see what is possible at the $1 billion level. I know a lot of people who think that the answer is that decadal level science cannot be accomplished at that lower level. (One former Voyager/Galileo scientist was recently asked at a conference what $1 billion could buy at Jupiter and he replied "A lot of radiation shielding.") Remember that the reason why Europa is on the table, and why people have been talking about it, is to do the science described in the decadal survey, not simply to go and plant a flag at Europa (flipping that on its head, there's no reason to do a Europa mission if it is not going to accomplish that level of science; might as well just wait another decade and try again).

Now I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing to do. After all, we might get some interesting mission proposals out of it, and there is value to doing mission proposals, because--as an example--the next time there is a decadal survey it helps to know some of the options ahead of time. But there is a risk to this. The risk is that the politicians will go off and approve a mission just so they can say "We are doing Europa!" when that mission doesn't accomplish interesting science. There is also a risk that this could kill the next New Frontiers opportunity, and that would annoy a lot of people with interests in the Moon, Venus, Saturn, comets, and other targets. It would also lead to a lot of programmatic chaos.

« Last Edit: 04/29/2014 11:42 pm by Blackstar »

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #365 on: 04/29/2014 11:46 pm »
So, going by priority, finding the depth and extent of the subsurface ocean comes first followed by chemistry.

As a senior NASA planetary science official recently explained, in addition to the science goals, there are also programmatic goals for any Europa mission. The key programmatic goal is that the mission should minimize the amount of science/data that has to be collected for the next mission.

Put more succinctly, if you do a flyby mission, it should provide enough data so that you can go to a lander mission next and not have to repeat another flyby or orbiter mission. That means that the mission should gather high resolution imagery of the surface to enable a lander.

Offline redliox

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2539
  • Illinois USA
  • Liked: 683
  • Likes Given: 97
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #366 on: 04/30/2014 12:32 am »
This is OMB pushing the issue. OMB wants NASA to see what is possible at the $1 billion level. I know a lot of people who think that the answer is that decadal level science cannot be accomplished at that lower level. And the reason why Europa is on the table, and why people have been talking about it, is to do the science described in the decadal survey (flipping that on its head, there's no reason to do a Europa mission if it is not going to accomplish that level of science; might as well just wait another decade and try again).

Now I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing to do. After all, we might get some interesting mission proposals out of it, and there is value to doing mission proposals, because--as an example--the next time there is a decadal survey it helps to know some of the options ahead of time.

That's why I see this more as a positive.  It opens opportunities.  Everyone says it must be a flagship...but only because nobody seriously looked into what a smaller spacecraft might do.  That's not engineering, that's presumption.

We've had spacecraft with modest instrumentation that served well.  A great example would be Mars Odyssey: an 800kg orbiter with 3 instruments, only 2 of which remote sensing.  Its THERMIS instrument singled out the MER landing sites, including the hematite Opportunity found, not to mention mapped the whole of Mars at resolutions only MRO surpassed.  Never underestimate the small guys.

Quote
The risk is that the politicians will go off and approve a mission just so they can say "We are doing Europa!" when that mission doesn't accomplish interesting science. There is also a risk that this could kill the next New Frontiers opportunity, and that would annoy a lot of people with interests in the Moon, Venus, Saturn, comets, and other targets. It would also lead to a lot of programmatic chaos.

Err...that already happened when EJSM won over TSSM, only to get canceled (i.e. the annoying everyone part).  Frankly as much as I retroactively wish TSSM won instead of EJSM (presuming its budget could fit better), if any mission deserves the next New Frontiers slot it should be the Uranus Orbiter, which was 3rd on the Decadal-to-do-list.  Of course this thread is about Europa, not to mention wishful thinking should be kept to a minimum.

Quote
Put more succinctly, if you do a flyby mission, it should provide enough data so that you can go to a lander mission next and not have to repeat another flyby or orbiter mission. That means that the mission should gather high resolution imagery of the surface to enable a lander.

Definitely agreed there.  Whatever gets sent, large or small, must be able to find safe ground for landing.  At worst, an orbiter with a camera system ought to be sent; more so coupled with the ice radar; Van Kane mentioned that as a suggestion for a New Frontiers fitting.  If we end up flying New Frontiers-class, it should be functional yet conservative.

Europa needs options, least we all end up waiting forever.  'Clipper is an excellent option, but shouldn't be exclusive in case Congress' generosity runs low.  I'm eager to see what's suggested by June, that way we all can better judge the choice between flagships and 'frontiers.  I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised either way!
"Let the trails lead where they may, I will follow."
-Tigatron

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #367 on: 04/30/2014 02:47 am »
That's why I see this more as a positive.  It opens opportunities.  Everyone says it must be a flagship...but only because nobody seriously looked into what a smaller spacecraft might do.  That's not engineering, that's presumption.

No, that's not what happened.

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13997
  • UK
  • Liked: 3974
  • Likes Given: 220
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #368 on: 07/28/2014 03:07 pm »
Europa Clipper Would Wash Out Other Nuclear-powered Missions.

Quote
BETHESDA, Md. — If NASA sends a nuclear-powered probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa, it would launch no sooner than 2024, and effectively rule out other nuclear missions to the outer solar system before then by tying up the specialized infrastructure required to produce plutonium-powered spacecraft batteries, a senior NASA official said here.

“If the Europa mission goes nuclear, it needs four or five [Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators],” Curt Niebur, a program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, said in a July 23 interview here during a meeting of the NASA-chartered Outer Planets Assessment Group. “That’s quite a few. If Europa needs that many, that sucks up all the output for the production line between now and 2024. There’s no more left."

Clipper will likely need such a power source, but the U.S. Department of Energy, which owns and operates all the equipment needed to refine plutonium-238 and press it into pellets usable by an MMRTG, now plans to shut down its aging pellet-stamping hot press at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, after 2015, when the department plans to produce one last batch of pellets for the single MMRTG needed for Mars 2020, a sample-caching rover based on Curiosity and slated to launch in 2020.

Len Dudzinski, program executive for radioisotope power systems at NASA headquarters, said in an interview here that the Department of Energy “won’t promise us to be able to support Europa without a new hot press.” NASA, not the Department of Energy, is on the hook to pay for the new equipment.


http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/41399europa-clipper-would-wash-out-other-nuclear-powered-missions

Offline Alpha_Centauri

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 759
  • England
  • Liked: 336
  • Likes Given: 158
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #369 on: 07/28/2014 05:16 pm »
What other realistic nuclear-powered outer solar system mission before 2024 is there to sacrifice?!

Offline GalacticIntruder

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 512
  • Pet Peeve:I hate the word Downcomer. Ban it.
  • Huntsville, AL
  • Liked: 247
  • Likes Given: 70
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #370 on: 07/28/2014 05:26 pm »
Might need to add the last part of the SpaceNews article.

Quote
That process will likely start in 2015, Carroll said. When it is done, the press will be taken offline until a new one can be installed. The Department of Energy hopes the new machine will be online by 2017. After that, the department could press enough fuel to prepare one flight-ready MMRTG a year, Carroll said.

2017 is probably optimistic for these things, but nevertheless, it is not a permanent end of Pu pellet production.

« Last Edit: 07/28/2014 05:29 pm by GalacticIntruder »
"And now the Sun will fade, All we are is all we made." Breaking Benjamin

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13997
  • UK
  • Liked: 3974
  • Likes Given: 220
Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #371 on: 07/28/2014 06:34 pm »
Might need to add the last part of the SpaceNews article.

Quote
That process will likely start in 2015, Carroll said. When it is done, the press will be taken offline until a new one can be installed. The Department of Energy hopes the new machine will be online by 2017. After that, the department could press enough fuel to prepare one flight-ready MMRTG a year, Carroll said.

2017 is probably optimistic for these things, but nevertheless, it is not a permanent end of Pu pellet production.

I wasn't sure if too add as it wasn't a definitive response on the issue.
« Last Edit: 07/28/2014 06:39 pm by Star One »

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #372 on: 07/29/2014 02:04 pm »
This is not a surprise to anybody who has been following either the Pu-238 subject or Europa mission plans closely. They've been saying things like this--although not loudly--for almost a year now. The context is that a lot of the Pu-238 production infrastructure is in poor shape and they need to replace equipment. I was talking to one person familiar with the whole issue. He said that NASA was initially concerned that they were getting stuck with too much cost, but after a group looked at the infrastructure, they said that if anything, NASA is getting off easy, because there are a lot of associated infrastructure costs that are hidden, and fortunately NASA is not being charged for them.

Offline Star One

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 13997
  • UK
  • Liked: 3974
  • Likes Given: 220
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #373 on: 07/29/2014 03:02 pm »

This is not a surprise to anybody who has been following either the Pu-238 subject or Europa mission plans closely. They've been saying things like this--although not loudly--for almost a year now. The context is that a lot of the Pu-238 production infrastructure is in poor shape and they need to replace equipment. I was talking to one person familiar with the whole issue. He said that NASA was initially concerned that they were getting stuck with too much cost, but after a group looked at the infrastructure, they said that if anything, NASA is getting off easy, because there are a lot of associated infrastructure costs that are hidden, and fortunately NASA is not being charged for them.

So it will be the DOE who picks up the majority of the cost of updating this equipment.

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #374 on: 07/29/2014 06:37 pm »

This is not a surprise to anybody who has been following either the Pu-238 subject or Europa mission plans closely. They've been saying things like this--although not loudly--for almost a year now. The context is that a lot of the Pu-238 production infrastructure is in poor shape and they need to replace equipment. I was talking to one person familiar with the whole issue. He said that NASA was initially concerned that they were getting stuck with too much cost, but after a group looked at the infrastructure, they said that if anything, NASA is getting off easy, because there are a lot of associated infrastructure costs that are hidden, and fortunately NASA is not being charged for them.

So it will be the DOE who picks up the majority of the cost of updating this equipment.

I would not say that. For this specific equipment, NASA may get stuck with most of the bill. I was saying that for the overall cost of doing all of this stuff, NASA may be getting a deal. Now I don't know why that is. One possibility is that if you had to run all of this entirely separate from DoE, then NASA would have to duplicate security, handling, staff, etc. that is currently being covered by DoE overhead. It gets squiggly when you start trying to figure out cross-agency costs.

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #375 on: 07/29/2014 08:45 pm »
I did not make it to OPAG last week, but a colleague did. I asked him about the "$1 billion Europa missions" in response to NASA's RFI. He said that there were 6 proposals. They are all being CATEd right now. NASA would not say anything more than that. Nothing about who proposed them or what they are about.

Offline sdsds

  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7202
  • “With peace and hope for all mankind.”
  • Seattle
  • Liked: 2050
  • Likes Given: 1962
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #376 on: 07/29/2014 10:05 pm »
Sorry for asking a rather basic question but: could the "$1 billion" Europa missions be designed (like Clipper) to take either a VEEGA trajectory after launch on Atlas or a direct trajectory after launch on SLS? Or is there something about $1b that makes that not possible?
— 𝐬𝐝𝐒𝐝𝐬 —

Offline Jim

  • Night Gator
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 37441
  • Cape Canaveral Spaceport
  • Liked: 21451
  • Likes Given: 428
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #377 on: 07/30/2014 12:31 am »
Sorry for asking a rather basic question but: could the "$1 billion" Europa missions be designed (like Clipper) to take either a VEEGA trajectory after launch on Atlas or a direct trajectory after launch on SLS? Or is there something about $1b that makes that not possible?

yes, that is why it could fly on SLS or Atlas V

Offline Blackstar

  • Veteran
  • Senior Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 15289
  • Liked: 7827
  • Likes Given: 2
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #378 on: 07/30/2014 03:52 am »
Sorry for asking a rather basic question but: could the "$1 billion" Europa missions be designed (like Clipper) to take either a VEEGA trajectory after launch on Atlas or a direct trajectory after launch on SLS? Or is there something about $1b that makes that not possible?

Er, this is a weird question. No matter what the cost of the mission, it still has to get to Europa. So it's either going to launch on an Atlas or an SLS. Now some people argue that taking a VEEGA trajectory is going to cost more in operations costs than a direct trajectory, because you have to spend $X per year and it is more years to go that way than directly. So maybe you save $80 million in operating costs with the direct trajectory vs. the VEEGA trajectory (but do you pay more for the launch vehicle?).

But that whole discussion is essentially irrelevant to the $1 billion mission issue. The $1 billion cost goal came from OMB, which is opposed to an expensive mission (which they define as "more than $1 billion") and so they told NASA to see what could be done for $1 billion. I suspect that the answer to that question is going to be "you cannot do much."


Offline vjkane

  • Full Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 1269
  • Liked: 617
  • Likes Given: 5
Re: Proposed Europa Missions
« Reply #379 on: 07/30/2014 04:43 am »
Europa Clipper Would Wash Out Other Nuclear-powered Missions.

SpaceNews generally writes does very good reporting, and this article is except for one omission.  The Clipper mission can also be done (based on current engineering assessments) with solar panels.  There are various engineering and budget trades (solar panels are heavier and must always point toward the sun; but the solar option is cheaper than the Pu-238 option). 

So far as I know, there's been no decision on which direction to go.

If the Clipper doesn't use Pu-238, then NASA could make MMRTGs available to Discovery and New Horizon missions.  There are a number of concepts that either depend on a plutonium power supply or would benefit from it.

 

Advertisement NovaTech
Advertisement Northrop Grumman
Advertisement
Advertisement Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island
Advertisement Brady Kenniston
Advertisement NextSpaceflight
Advertisement Nathan Barker Photography
0