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Robotic Spacecraft (Astronomy, Planetary, Earth, Solar/Heliophysics) => Space Science Coverage => Topic started by: vjkane on 07/20/2020 02:45 pm
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The next planetary Decadal Survey is ramping up, and it seems time for it to have it's own thread.
This survey is mandated by Congress to provide prioritization of missions, and supporting ground efforts such as technology development, for new missions in the decade starting 2023. At the moment, preparatory efforts are underway such as the study of 10 mission concepts chosen competitively and the writing of white papers that serve as community input.
In the last Survey, the effort was organized into a steering committee and several destination committees (Mars, Venus, outer planets, etc). I've seen talk that this one might have more of an emphasis on themes, but I haven't seen any announcements. The panels will examine the key scientific questions and mission options to examine them. Their reports will then be used by the steering committee to set overall priorities.
In the past, the survey grandfathers in all missions already in development, and -- from memory -- these are likely to be Europa Clipper, Dragonfly, whichever mission(s) are selected in the current Discovery competition, and Mars sample return. During the period of the Survey's activities, the next New Frontiers mission competition will be in progress.
My guess is that the next Survey will decide to continue with the current mix of mission classes: SIMPLEx small sats (currently <$55M), Discovery ($700-800M), New Frontiers ($1-1.5B), and Flagship missions. Having Mars sample return development occurring during the next decade likely will put a crimp on the ambitions affordable for other targets.
I see a few key decisions that the next Survey will need to make:
1) What are the priority science questions for the next decade? This will favor some missions and destinations.
2) What should be the recommended balance in spending among the various classes of missions?
3) What Flagship mission should follow Mars sample return. I predict that the tough discussions will be between an ice giant mission and a second (following Clipper) dedicated ocean mission, perhaps to Enceladus. (There are also lots of ideas for Flagship missions to other destinations, too.) There will be about a four year window from 2030 to 2034 for using Jupiter gravity assists to get to either ice giant.)
4) How should the New Frontiers be structued? Currently, there is a candidate mission list selected by each Decadal Survey (although NASA can and has modified the list). There are calls to open this competition up to proposals to any destination. If it isn't opened up, what are the handful of favored candidate missions (which will reflect the key science themes)?
5) If the planetary science budget shrinks during the decade, what parts of the program should be prioritized?
Here are some good links:
Survey homepage - https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032)
Spreadsheet with links to published white papers (>300 as I write this) - https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032)
Status reports for the competitively selected mission studies - https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/pmcs2020/format/ (https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/pmcs2020/format/)
[zubenelgenubi: Previous Planetary Science Decadal Survey thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=24381.0)]
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I would like to see them look into if a CLPS like approach might work for the inner solar system from Venus to the asteroid belt. If commercial standardized space craft could make more frequent trip, Investigators maybe could just focus on the instrument suite for these trips; it might be a way to do more science with less cost.
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I would like to see them look into if a CLPS like approach might work for the inner solar system from Venus to the asteroid belt. If commercial standardized space craft could make more frequent trip, Investigators maybe could just focus on the instrument suite for these trips; it might be a way to do more science with less cost.
The reason CLPS was possible is there are multiple US companies that are working on small-medium lunar landers. That allows NASA to spread out risk by working with many providers.
There aren't multiple companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts, so that model won't work.
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The reason CLPS was possible is there are multiple US companies that are working on small-medium lunar landers. That allows NASA to spread out risk by working with many providers.
There aren't multiple companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts, so that model won't work.
I believe there are zero companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts.
Commercial solutions work when there are a number potential customers. Planetary missions beyond the surface of the moon all have many specialized constraints. There have been many proposals to create standardized buses. The only ones I can think of are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter > MAVEN and Mars Polar Orbiter > Phoenix > InSight.
Imagine that a company builds a standard spacecraft for Venus. The last US mission to Venus was in the early 1990s. Not a good business model.
The Mars community has suggested a series of smallsats for Mars. Perhaps, if the Decadal Survey & NASA & the Office of Budget and Management & Congress are all kind, there might be 2-3 in a decade. Would you bet your business on that chain of events?
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There have been 350 white papers submitted to the new Decadal Survey. The deadline for science and general white papers was July 15; mission specific white papers are due by August 15.
I did a couple of charts on the self reported categories for the current white papers; some to many may have claimed multiple targets or science themes.
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The reason CLPS was possible is there are multiple US companies that are working on small-medium lunar landers. That allows NASA to spread out risk by working with many providers.
There aren't multiple companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts, so that model won't work.
I believe there are zero companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts.
Commercial solutions work when there are a number potential customers. Planetary missions beyond the surface of the moon all have many specialized constraints. There have been any proposals to create standardized buses. The only ones I can think of are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter > MAVEN and Mars Polar Orbiter > Phoenix > InSight.
Imagine that a company builds a standard spacecraft for Venus. The last US mission to Venus was in the early 1990s. Not a good business model.
The Mars community has suggested a series of smallsats for Mars. Perhaps, if the Decadal Survey & NASA & the Office of Budget and Management & Congress are all kind, there might be 2-3 in a decade. Would you bet your business on that chain of events?
I believe there were zero commercial ventures that landed anything on the Moon prior to the CLPS program.
The PPE for the Lunar Gateway is based on a commercial bus. If a similar type of approach built a standard bus with solar electric propulsion to fly at regularly within the inner solar system, I don't see why per mission costs wouldn't come down and the number of opportunities increased. Some standardized instruments off the shelf could reduce R&D costs. I could see a business case for offering a standard bus for lower cost more frequent missions. You might find new customers beyond NASA. Just look a Japan launching a mission to Mars orbit for the UAE. It might open up these kinds of missions for more international collaboration if the costs come down.
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The reason CLPS was possible is there are multiple US companies that are working on small-medium lunar landers. That allows NASA to spread out risk by working with many providers.
There aren't multiple companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts, so that model won't work.
I believe there are zero companies working on sending orbiters to Venus or probes to the asteroid belts.
Commercial solutions work when there are a number potential customers. Planetary missions beyond the surface of the moon all have many specialized constraints. There have been any proposals to create standardized buses. The only ones I can think of are the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter > MAVEN and Mars Polar Orbiter > Phoenix > InSight.
Imagine that a company builds a standard spacecraft for Venus. The last US mission to Venus was in the early 1990s. Not a good business model.
The Mars community has suggested a series of smallsats for Mars. Perhaps, if the Decadal Survey & NASA & the Office of Budget and Management & Congress are all kind, there might be 2-3 in a decade. Would you bet your business on that chain of events?
I presume you meant to say "there have been many."
Which is indeed the case. NASA tried to make a "Modular Common Spacecraft Bus" for space probes, designed particularly for small lunar missions, but it was ony ever used on the LADEE mission and in a couple of proposals that were not selected for flight.
Part of the issue is that probes vary tremendously in design, depending on their purpose, and mandating the use of only one bus is a big constraint on the design and layout of the probe.
That said, there are several other examples where probes in the same family used the same bus. The Mariner series of probes, for example. And NASA does use commercially available satellite buses where they are able to, especially for Earth observing satellites. Examples: ICON uses Northrop Grumman's LEOStar-2 satellite bus, and the Landsat-9 and JPSS-2 spacecraft, currently being built, use the larger LEOStar-3 bus.
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I believe there were zero commercial ventures that landed anything on the Moon prior to the CLPS program.
The PPE for the Lunar Gateway is based on a commercial bus. If a similar type of approach built a standard bus with solar electric propulsion to fly at regularly within the inner solar system, I don't see why per mission costs wouldn't come down and the number of opportunities increased. Some standardized instruments off the shelf could reduce R&D costs. I could see a business case for offering a standard bus for lower cost more frequent missions. You might find new customers beyond NASA. Just look a Japan launching a mission to Mars orbit for the UAE. It might open up these kinds of missions for more international collaboration if the costs come down.
One of the reasons that countries pay for planetary exploration is to support their own industries. Japan, for example, doesn't want to ship a few $100M to Europe or the US to supply an interplanetary spacecraft.
UAE is, so far, unique in that it doesn't have a sufficiently capable home space industry and is using this mission in part to try to kick start one.
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That said, there are several other examples where probes in the same family used the same bus. The Mariner series of probes, for example. And NASA does use commercially available satellite buses where they are able to, especially for Earth observing satellites. Examples: ICON uses Northrop Grumman's LEOStar-2 satellite bus, and the Landsat-9 and JPSS-2 spacecraft, currently being built, use the larger LEOStar-3 bus.
Psyche is an example, and the only one I know if, that uses a commercial satellite bus for an interplanetary mission. I don't haven't heard that any of the current Discovery missions plan to use a commercial bus.
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Psyche is an example, and the only one I know if, that uses a commercial satellite bus for an interplanetary mission.
That overstates the situation considerably. The Psyche "SEP Chassis" is adapted from a commercial bus, it's not like it's build-to-print or anything. https://blog.maxar.com/space-infrastructure/2020/psyche-five-questions-with-maxars-program-management
There's always a lot of heritage with previous designs but the "standard bus" concept has been tried many times and so far never succeeded. At low flight rates it simply makes little sense.
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There's always a lot of heritage with previous designs but the "standard bus" concept has been tried many times and so far never succeeded. At low flight rates it simply makes little sense.
See also Mariner Mark II. Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby > Cassini/Huygens > ?
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There's always a lot of heritage with previous designs but the "standard bus" concept has been tried many times and so far never succeeded. At low flight rates it simply makes little sense.
See also Mariner Mark II. Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby > Cassini/Huygens > ?
The plan was to have a line of missions based on the Mariner Mark II bus. Only Cassini, in a much modified form as I recall, ever flew.
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Psyche is an example, and the only one I know if, that uses a commercial satellite bus for an interplanetary mission.
That overstates the situation considerably. The Psyche "SEP Chassis" is adapted from a commercial bus, it's not like it's build-to-print or anything. https://blog.maxar.com/space-infrastructure/2020/psyche-five-questions-with-maxars-program-management
There's always a lot of heritage with previous designs but the "standard bus" concept has been tried many times and so far never succeeded. At low flight rates it simply makes little sense.
Define "tried many times". I have heard it discussed a lot, but aside from the Soviet Veneras and the Ranger probes from the 1960s, I don't think anyone say that we've tried a common design with many instances in any meaningful way.
It's simply not possible to declare success or failure on a concept that hasn't really been tried.
I agree that the very, very low flight rate makes it almost impossible to standardize designs. Is that not part of the problem? I submit that a higher flight rate of missions can be done with a lower cost per mission .... We can have lower or equal total costs for planetary exploration with many more modest missions.
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I submit that a higher flight rate of missions can be done with a lower cost per mission .... We can have lower or equal total costs for planetary exploration with many more modest missions.
Thus, "Explorer" > Discovery > New Frontiers > Flagship
If a "modest" mission does not answer one or more of the "burning" questions, then why fly it?
"Burning" being determined by the scientists communally.
Thus, decadal surveys, and mid-decadal reviews.
As Alan Thicke wrote and sang: "It takes Diff'rent Strokes to move the world!"
That's what I'm talking about, Willis. ;)
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The idea of using buses intended for communications sats for planetary work has had a good amount of recent application outside of the US; Chang'e 1/2/5-T1 used the DFH-3A bus, and Chandrayaan-1 and the -2 orbiter were based on standard ISRO buses. Nothing farther out than the moon though.
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Define "tried many times". I have heard it discussed a lot, but aside from the Soviet Veneras and the Ranger probes from the 1960s, I don't think anyone say that we've tried a common design with many instances in any meaningful way.
Mars Observer was supposed to be the first of several common-bus missions. Mariner Mark II was mentioned; that was a bit of a joke because CRAF and Cassini had quite dissimilar requirements to begin with and then CRAF was cancelled. MCO and Mars Odyssey were very similar but not identical, MRO and Juno were evolutions from there, etc.
At the flight rates we have, and with competed instrument suites and very different science goals and mission profiles, a standardized bus and instrument complement makes no sense IMHO. At a much higher flight rate and for similar science goals I'm sure it would make more sense. As it is, the reuse is at the box and subsystem level, not at the top-assembly level. I don't think many people appreciate how hand-built and unique most planetary spacecraft are.
At any rate, this is off-topic for the Decadal Survey since that is about goals, not implementation.
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I think they should include the costs of operations and launch in New Frontiers and Discovery proposals. The development of Falcon Heavy is going to open up new opportunities for outer solar system exploration. They are claiming a payload to Pluto of 3.5 tons. However, proposals that need either a Falcon Heavy or a Vulcan Heavy should spend less on other parts of the project to offset the additional launch cost. So proposals should be charged a notional cost of $200 million for a Falcon Heavy, $100 million for a Falcon 9, or $0 if they get a free launch from the Europeans. What NASA actually pays for the launch will depend on what kind of deal the agency could get from the rocket industry.
Proposals need to be charged operations costs in order to provide incentives to reduce those costs. The Habex telescope proposal mentioned using a celestial navigation system to reduce costs. This involved using some additional star trackers to track asteroids. Another idea to make navigation simpler is to use an onboard atomic clock. Both ideas involve spending more on the spacecraft upfront in order to reduce operations costs down the road. Proposals won't do that as long as operations costs are free money.
For New Frontiers the list of destinations should be changed. Anything beyond the orbit of Saturn should be considered for a flyby unless that target has been selected for a Flagship orbiter. Flybys of Neptune or Uranus should drop an atmospheric probe. There is a long list of large Kuiper Belt objects which would be great destinations and the availability of new rockets should reduce the time to reach them.
At Saturn I think either an Enceladus or a Titan focused mission should be considered. Also worth considering would be a Saturn system mission covering multiple objectives like an atmosphere probe, Enceladus plume investigation, Titan surface imaging and Dragonfly comms relay.
Jupiter missions should be off the table until we get data back from Juice and Clipper.
Small bodies are well covered by Discovery class missions, but comet sample return is a long standing ask and should be included. Ceres sample return also looks promising.
For the moon I think there are three interesting objectives. One is a nuclear powered rover that could explore the ice deposits in the shadowed craters. The second is a long range rover. The third is a geochronology payload which could improve the understanding of the rate of impacts and help to make ages estimated from crater counting more reliable. It would be nice to merge a couple of these objectives into a single mission. Lunar rover costs are going to be hard to estimate. The moon is very different from Mars. Rover costs may be a lot less.
If a Venus radar is selected by either Discovery or the Europeans then Venus should be off the table. If not, then they should look at merging VERITAS and DAVINCI into a single New Frontiers proposal.
Neither Lunar sample return nor the Lunar geophysical network has won previous competitions. I think they should be taken off the New Frontiers list and merged into the CLPS program instead. To improve lander designs, engineers need the opportunity for a series of flights, with opportunities to improve the lander design after each mission. Most technological progress comes from incremental improvements of existing designs. The need for a series of landings is very compatible with deploying a geophysical network mission. However, NASA would need to pick a single lander provider for this to work. Affordable sample return would be a long term challenge for the lander builders. That would be compatible with the CLPS objective of advancing lunar landing capabilities.
When it comes to Flagships the Ice Giants community has made an extremely compelling case for a Uranus orbiter and probe. The 2011 concept study had a cost of a little under $2 billion and is still a very sound proposal for the next Flagship.
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When it comes to Flagships the Ice Giants community has made an extremely compelling case for a Uranus orbiter and probe. The 2011 concept study had a cost of a little under $2 billion and is still a very sound proposal for the next Flagship.
I like the Uranus orbiter concept. Having sent orbiters to both Jupiter and Saturn, I think Uranus is the next logical target for an orbiter mission. Furthermore, both the cost and transit time of a Uranus orbiter mission should be notably less than they would be for Neptune, though some would consider Neptune the more scientifically compelling mission, especially if it incorporated a Triton probe or lander (though that would add cost).
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I think they should include the costs of operations and launch in New Frontiers and Discovery proposals.
*snip*
Are you saying the launch vehicle should be selected at the time of the mission is awarded to a proposal?
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I think they should include the costs of operations and launch in New Frontiers and Discovery proposals. The development of Falcon Heavy is going to open up new opportunities for outer solar system exploration. They are claiming a payload to Pluto of 3.5 tons. However, proposals that need either a Falcon Heavy or a Vulcan Heavy should spend less on other parts of the project to offset the additional launch cost. So proposals should be charged a notional cost of $200 million for a Falcon Heavy, $100 million for a Falcon 9, or $0 if they get a free launch from the Europeans. What NASA actually pays for the launch will depend on what kind of deal the agency could get from the rocket industry.
NASA dropped launch costs from the PI budget because PIs have no control over how much launch vendors charge. I suspect that many think that launch cost is approximately proportional to target distance, but since missions that travel past Mars use Venus/Earth/Mars gravity assists, the energy needed for launch is to the first gravity assist target.
Operations costs were excluded from PI costs because including them effectively excludes missions that must spend years in transit. How could, for example, Trident with its ~13 year flight time compete with a Venus mission with a 6 month flight time?
You may believe that the outer solar system is less worthy of study, and you have the right to that opinion.
And NASA absolutely looks at total mission costs when deciding on the missions to select, and you can be sure that PIs are aware of these costs knowing that. It simply isn't in the budget category that NASA asks them to manage.
Proposals need to be charged operations costs in order to provide incentives to reduce those costs. The Habex telescope proposal mentioned using a celestial navigation system to reduce costs. This involved using some additional star trackers to track asteroids. Another idea to make navigation simpler is to use an onboard atomic clock. Both ideas involve spending more on the spacecraft upfront in order to reduce operations costs down the road. Proposals won't do that as long as operations costs are free money.
See note above
For New Frontiers the list of destinations should be changed. Anything beyond the orbit of Saturn should be considered for a flyby unless that target has been selected for a Flagship orbiter. Flybys of Neptune or Uranus should drop an atmospheric probe. There is a long list of large Kuiper Belt objects which would be great destinations and the availability of new rockets should reduce the time to reach them.
The furthest target for a New Frontiers mission is currently a Saturn atmospheric probe. Both JPL and APL believe they have viable concepts for New Frontiers Uranus orbiters.
Jupiter missions should be off the table until we get data back from Juice and Clipper.
So drop Io from the New Frontiers list and prohibit it from Discovery proposals? Both JUICE and Clipper will only do remote studies of Io that cannot answer the key questions identified for this world by the previous Decadal Survery.
When it comes to Flagships the Ice Giants community has made an extremely compelling case for a Uranus orbiter and probe. The 2011 concept study had a cost of a little under $2 billion and is still a very sound proposal for the next Flagship.
See note above on new Uranus orbiter concepts. Including an atmospheric probe would bust the New Frontiers PI cost cap unless it were contributed by another space agency.
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@whitelancer64 ... No, NASA can continue to buy launch vehicles the way it does now, and if the launch cost more than expected that would not affect the PI budget. I think it should be possible for people to propose missions using Falcon Heavy, but they also need to have an incentive to use a cheaper launch vehicle if possible. I think the proposal should be charged a fixed amount by NASA depending on what class of launch they require. $200 million seems reasonable for a 'Heavy' launch, $100 million seems right for a regular launch. The costs caps for Discovery and New Frontiers would increase to accommodate the cost of a launch.
@vjkane...Despite taking operations costs out of Discovery budgets, there has yet to be a successful Discovery proposal for an outer planets mission. (unless you count Lucy) The solution for outer planets exploration is to have more New Frontiers opportunities and to give people the freedom to propose any target beyond the orbit of Jupiter. The inner solar system is well catered to by the Discovery program, so I think it is appropriate for New Frontiers opportunities there to be more limited.
Jupiter is a borderline case. It is an outer planet, but it can be done with solar panels rather than an RTG. It has an active mission now and two Flagships are in the works. I'd leave it off the New Frontiers list but it would still be open to Discovery proposals.
On the subject of ice giants, I think they deserve a small Flagship even if there are viable New Frontiers orbiters. They are common among exoplanets, yet we know very little about them. Accomplishing the highest priority goals requires both an atmosphere probe and gravity science.
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I have some more general thoughts about the Decadal Survey.
In my opinion, the biggest new findings of the past decade have been:
1/ Pluto is active!
2/ Hydrothermal activity on Ceres
3/ Mars had long lived lakes and there are lots of organics in the rocks
4/ There are lots of exoplanets, including Earth and Neptune sized ones
5/ Enceladus plumes have organics
I think the major issues for the next decade are:
1/ There are opportunities to find past or present life on Mars, Enceladus, Ceres and Europa. Mars sample return and Europa Clipper address two of these opportunities, but what is to be done about Enceladus and Ceres?
2/ What are ice giants, how do they form, and why are they common in other solar systems?
3/ Why are terrestrial planets so diverse?
4/ What is the manned program going to do and what should planetary scientists do to support it?
Looking at the budget, there seems to be $1.2 billion per year to build new missions. Much of that will go to mars sample return for the next few years. After MSR launches in 2026, there will be $7.2 billion over the next 6 years for other things.
I think the money should be spent on 1 Flagship Uranus orbiter and probe for $2.2 billion, 2 New Frontiers missions for $3.0 billion, 2 Discovery missions for $1.6 billion, and at least $400 million towards a strategic mars orbiter launching in 2032.
I think that ice giants are one of the most important gaps in knowledge. Most of our understanding comes from the Voyager 2 flybys. A Uranus orbiter would hugely advance our knowledge of these planets.
I think the targets for New Frontiers missions should be:
1/Any KBO
2/Any mission at Neptune
3/Any mission at Saturn
4/ Comet Sample Return
5/ Ceres Sample Return
6/ A lunar rover with two of the following three features: geochronology, long range or permanently shadowed crater investigation
7/ Any mission at Venus
8/ Mercury lander
I think the decadal survey should select a couple of Discovery sized missions as strategic priorities which would not be part of the competition. The first is a new Mars orbiter launching in 2030 or 2032. By that time, we will be dependent on Maven for relay from Insight and Perseverance. When the results from MSR come in, there is likely to be a call for new landed missions targeting the types of rocks which were most interesting. A new orbiter will be needed to enable site selection for future missions.
If a Venus radar is not picked by the current Discovery competition, then some kind of Venus radar should be selected as a strategic priority. As the people who worked on Magellan retire, the expertise on Venus will disappear unless there is a new mission. As Mars orbiter missions come to an end, there will be an opportunity to move mars scientists over to working on Venus. And future data on exoplanets will raise questions about the different ways terrestrial can evolve. Venus provides an opportunity to study a 'stagnant lid' type terrestrial planet without active plate tectonics.
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New thread: New Frontiers 5 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=51588.0)
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There was discussion on the New Frontiers 5 thread about appropriate targets. Blackstar made a comment that the different planetary communities, as represented by their analysis groups, are making recommendations as to whether the next Decadal Survey should specify a list of candidate missions or open the program up to any proposal (like the Discovery program).
I've gathered statements from the various analysis groups in published white papers. I wasn't able to find a statement for the Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG). Various documents recommend New Frontiers missions to Ceres, multiple main belt asteroids, and a comet sample return.
Lunar (LEAG)
"LEAG strongly supports using the decadal survey process to identify specific science priorities that should be addressed within the New Frontiers program. This process is the best route for building community consensus for large, high-priority, PI-led missions. Any changes to the New Frontiers target list should be made via a formal, community-focused process, as recommended in the Planetary Decadal Midterm Review."
The document then suggests five possibilities for the Decadal community to consider:
Lunar Geophysical Network
Solar System Chronology*
Lunar Polar Volatiles Explorer
Long-Range Geologic Explorer
Next Generation Lunar Orbiter
*This goal would allow for a South Pole-Aitken Basin sample return, but also allow for in situ measurements using instruments not available at the time of previous Decadal Surveys.
Mars (MEPAG)
"In August, 2019, the MEPAG community debated whether a curated list of allowable New Frontiers (NF) missions should exist [VM6 Finding]. Arguments for and against were discussed.
Three points were noted in support of an open competition (no list):
1. Open competition would enable response to rapidly changing priorities, whereas a curated list would not.
2. Making NF mission definition part of an open competition would remove concern about how to keep such a list up-to-date and fair to the entire community.
3. No solar system object would be excluded (e.g., there are currently no Mars or Mercury candidates).
Three factors were cited in support of a curated list of possible NF missions:
1. While it was agreed that open competition would allow rapid respond to science advancements, development of NF proposals require significant time and resources. As a result, a completely open call could overwhelm the supporting technical centers, leading to their internal processes and priorities (rather than the most compelling science) defining which proposals would go forward. Such key support centers could thus become de facto arbitrators and gatekeepers, as they would necessarily down-select proposals based on institutional concerns in addition to science-driven factors (such as internal perception of success or personnel/technical resource allocation). This would stifle both science-driven mission development and likely the diversity of mission types and mission teams.
2. It was agreed that a prioritized NF list would enable the Decadal Survey to set scientific priorities across the most expensive and technically challenging classes of missions (NF and Flagships), while retaining many advantages of open competition. There was concern that if NF was completely open (and thus decoupled from the Decadal Survey process), then the Decadal Survey vetting process would include only Flagships and constitute a much more limited assessment of science-driven mission activity.
3. It was noted that while no Mars candidate is in the present NF list, community discussions held during MEPAG meetings over the past several years and MEPAG Science Analysis Groups have demonstrated that there is high-priority Mars-related science that can be accomplished within the New Frontiers class, and that there are Mars missions which are competitive in this class.
Ultimately, the arguments for a Decadal Survey-crafted and -curated, limited list of NF missions were seen as more compelling than arguments against.
High-priority science investigation areas that fall into the NF class include:
- In situ geochronology
- Regional/global-scale change detection from orbit
- Search for extant life (surface, ice caps, or deep subsurface)
- Recent Martian climate history (both orbital and surface missions)
- Geologic diversity/environmental transitions
Outer Planets (OPAG)
"For New Frontiers class missions, OPAG supports efforts to find a synergistic solution to maintaining the New Frontiers program’s targeted approach to the highest science goals of NASA and the science community, while maintaining the flexibility to respond to new discoveries or new technological opportunities that will evolve in the coming decade. These solutions could be structured in such a way as to allow proposers to respond with creative approaches not envisioned within the survey process, up to and including opening competition to all Ocean Worlds, or to all solar system destinations that address high priority questions advanced in the Decadal Survey. New Frontiers can help address congressional and public interest in an Ocean Worlds program. In all cases, we support the continuing exploration of Ocean Worlds within New Frontiers beyond the selection of the Dragonfly mission to Titan, and advocate for the inclusion of an Enceladus Ocean World mission along with Io Observer (unless selected in the ongoing Discovery competition) and Saturn probes (depending on the outcome of New Frontiers 5). Advances in technology may allow for competed life detection missions or Neptune and Uranus missions within the New Frontiers program. Other concepts deserve consideration as well, such as missions to KBO planets. Given the abundance of worlds to explore in the outer solar system, and the operational challenges of such missions, target restrictions are particularly onerous for the outer planets community."
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What I really meant was that an enterprising person might look at what future New Frontiers missions were being considered by each of the AGs in their respective areas. But your info on their position re an open or limited list of targets is also very useful.
To the extent that white papers commissioned by an AG lists targets, they are in my previous post. Again, SBAG doesn't seem to have a single guiding white paper, but it may come. I believe that LEAG and MEPAG's relevant white papers were post recently.
Beyond that, I expect a fair number of outside teams to propose various NF concepts.
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I came across a couple of New Frontiers ideas from OPAG meetings.
There is the "Uranus-Dwarf Planet flyby Tour" which would flyby Uranus and then go on to a large KBO. From another presentation it seems the target they have in mind is Varuna, an egg shaped KBO 1000km in diameter They would also try to get an MU69 sized KBO. They mention the possibility of dropping a probe at Uranus as a foreign contribution.
Also possible is Neptune and RR245, which is a scattered object of 670km diameter. That launches 2/24/31, arrives at Neptune 3/31/39 and RR245 on 8/11/44. It requires a C3 of 106.
Also possible is Saturn and Haumea.
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So, as I mentioned before, there is a case for putting New Frontiers and Discovery on hold and spending the money on 4 small Flagship missions instead. The average cost would be about $1.7 billion per mission.
#1 Saturn system orbiter focused on sampling the plumes of Enceladus and imaging Titan in support of Dragonfly. This would also drop a probe in to Saturn's atmosphere. Cost: $1.6 billion. Launch 2028. Arrival 2034.
#2 Io-Neptune/Triton-KBO flyby. This is an upgraded version of Trident, and would drop a probe into Neptune's atmosphere. Cost $1.2 billion Launch 2031. Arrival 2039.
#3 Uranus orbiter. Cost $2.3 billion Launch mid 2030s. Arrival 2042. This also drops an atmosphere probe.
#4 Fly the VERITAS and DAVINCI proposals to Venus. Cost $1.8 billion Launch date flexible.
There are a couple of advantages to having a planned set of missions. One is that some components could be bought in groups, which would save money. The second is that you would get a complete set of compositional data on the outer planets, which would enable you to spot trends and anomalies.
Together with the European missions, this set of missions would mean that every major solar system object except Pluto would be visited over the next 20 years.
Mercury: Bepi-Columbo
Venus: VERITAS and DAVINCI
Moon: Viper and whatever else CLPS produces
Mars: Perserverance, Rosalind Franklin and sample return
Small bodies: Psyche, Lucy, Dart, Comet Interceptor, Neowise
Jupiter: Juice, Clipper, #2
Saturn: Dragonfly, #1
Uranus: #3
Neptune: #2
KBOs : #2
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Here are proposals for Mars missions presented at recent MEPAG meetings. There appears to be consensus about the need to fly an ice mapping SAR. This instrument features in four proposals. However, Morie and Mosaic use a P-band radar while Ice Mapper and Compass use a Canadian supplied L-band radar.
Mars Flagship:
Mosaic: Potentially Flagship class cost
***
Mars New Frontiers:
Morie :
Ground ice, recent climate variation and geological mapping : P-Band (450 MHz) Radar; IR spectrometer 1.3-4.2 microns 5m resolution; IR spectrometer 6-25 microns at 100m resolution; 1m resolution camera 20 channels 0.4-1.7 microns; wide angle camera; stereo camera for 5m resolution digital elevation model; 3m Ka band HGA 200Wrf; 47 sq m solar array; SEP; slightly over New Frontiers cost cap
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/Day2/15_MORIE_for_MEPAG_post.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JMUqa-T2is&feature=youtu.be
Mosaic:
Climate, ionosphere-magnetosphere and atmospheric escape : Up to 10 mostly small spacecraft; 1 Mothership in polar orbit, 4 Areostationaries, 2 Elliptical, 3 Polar; New Frontiers to Flagship class cost
Mothership in polar orbit has P-Band Radar for ground ice mapping, weather instruments, wind measuring instruments, and upper atmosphere instruments.
Polar orbiting small sats measure atmospheric temperature profiles at different times of day.
Elliptical small sats focus on magnetospere
Areostationary spacecraft measure weather, magnetosphere and upstream solar wind
Cost is New Frontiers to Flagship class
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/Day2/13_MOSAIC_MEPAG_2020_short_version_minimal_backup_post.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnu2stLRY74&feature=youtu.be
Mars Astrobiological Cave and Internal Habitability Explorer (MACIE)
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_08_PhillipsLander.MACIE.pdf
VALKYRIE: Deep drill to 10m and look for life
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_06_Stamenkovic.DeepTrekTech.pdf
Geochronology study: A single site Mars geochronology mission is in the New Frontiers cost class
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/Day2/17_MEPAG_talk_v3_post.pdf
***
Mars New Frontiers / Discovery:
Ice Mapper: Maps ice to 6m depth using Canadian L-band (930 Mhz) SAR technology. This is likely a Discovery sized concept, but cost isn't stated so I place it here. Note that there are two competing ice mapping radar proposals. These radars can also spot geological features buried beneath dust.The P-band radar on Morie claims to be able to go deeper, down to 20m.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/Day1/16_WATZIN-HALTIGIN-Ice%20Mapper_MEPAG_%20April%20152020_Final%20v2_post.pdf
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=50119.0
MER class rover with modern instruments :
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_31_Blake.MERclassRover.pdf
***
Mars Discovery:
General proposal for measuring Mars Atmospheric Winds from orbit:
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_14_Guzewich.MeasuringWinds.pdf
Uses LIDAR or sub-millimeter sounder
Compass: Maps ice using Canadian supplied SAR, operating in L-band. Also has sounder for temperature profiles, wide angle camera and wind measurement using sub-millimeter wave instrument
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/ninthmars2019/pdf/6450.pdf
Icebreaker: Polar lander with 1m drill and life detection instruments
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/abstracts/McKay_Icebreaker.pdf
Mpress: Airbag polar lander with 50cm drill feeding samples to tunable laser spectrometer and raman spectrometer. Also ground penetrating radar to study layering and meteorological instruments. Winter meteorology is enabled by RHUs with powersticks.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/abstracts/Byrne_M-PRESS.pdf
***
Other:
General proposal for Areostationary orbiter:
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_13_Montabone.Aerostationary.pdf
Good for weather, surface properties, upstream solar wind, communications relay; cost not quoted but probably Discovery class
Terrestrial planets comparative climatology: Visits both Mars and Venus using SEP, drops probe at Venus
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/whitetopics/WhitePaper_15_Tamppari.TPCCMission.pdf
Measures solar energy inputs and wind profiles at both planets; Cost not quoted but likely New Frontiers
Aeolus: Wind measurements from a small spacecraft. This uses a Doppler wind sounder.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2017-09/05_092517-MEPAG35-Aeolus-Colaprete.pdf
Mars Polardrop: Microlanders to investigate polar icecaps and climate. Uses small probes with parawings to land meteorological payloads.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/abstracts/Hayne_PolarDrop.pdf
Mars Ice Condensation and Density Orbiter: Imaging Lidar to monitor the polar night
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/abstracts/Titus_MICADO.pdf
Bio-safety Level 4 Sample receiving facility for Mars Sample Return
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Here are proposals for Lunar, Venus and Mercury missions. There are two lunar sample return proposals. One is Discovery cost class (Isochron), and the other is New Frontiers cost class (South pole aitken basin). I don't know why those two differ in cost.
Something that was new to me was the proposal to detect seismic signals on Venus from a balloon using infrasound.
Lunar New Frontiers:
Geochronology: Two site hopper mission is a Flagship class, single site mission is New Frontiers class
South Pole Aitken Basin Sample Return
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160005243
Intrepid long range moon rover: RTG powered with range over 1800 km. Surveys 4 billion years of lunar magmatism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmKakqNVtMI&feature=youtu.be
Lunar Geophysical Network:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rf8uQUswZQ&feature=youtu.be
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2020/pdf/2355.pdf
***
Lunar Discovery:
Lunar Compass rover mission exploring a lunar magnetic anomaly
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2018/pdf/1732.pdf
Isochron : Sample return from youngest lunar basalt to improve solar system chronology
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2019/pdf/1110.pdf
***
Other lunar:
Next generation lunar orbiter
Reusable, refuelable sample return lander based at Gateway
***
Venus Flagship Mission concept: This includes an orbiter with SAR, a lander, a long lived balloon and a couple of small sats to study atmospheric escape. The radar has goals similar to Envision and complementary to VERITAS. This mission focuses on high resolution imaging of up to 1m resolution of small areas, while VERITAS does global topography and medium resolution imaging. New to me was the proposal for a long-lived variable altitude balloon, which would be capable of seismic studies using infrasound. If that technology works, it would be a breakthrough in studying the Venus interior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbFycq-1tgE&feature=youtu.be
Venus balloon link: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/vexag/reports/Venus_Aerial_Platforms_Final_Report_Summary_Report_10_25_2018.pdf
***
Mercury Lander Mission Concept (New Frontiers class)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKH6oymc93M&feature=youtu.be
***
Link to planetary mission concept studies workshop 5-26-20 : https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/pmcs2020/format/
Link to lunar workshop on decadal preparations: https://www.lpi.usra.edu/leag/meetings/archive/
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This site lists the upcoming meetings of the Decadal Survey panels.
If you're interested, you'd need to watch these meetings as they occur. Videos of the meetings and the presentations from the meetings are not being posted.
Events | Space Studies Board https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events (https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events)
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This site has all the final reports for the mission concept studies completed before the start of the Decadal Survey process.
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/documents (https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/documents)
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I got curious about the possible range of costs for the missions presented in the advanced concept studies. The table in the attached image are the costs reported in the studies. Phases A-D are for costs through launch; phases E-F are post-launch costs. I excluded the costs of launches.
In the last Decadal Survey, independent cost estimates for mission concepts came in much higher than those provided by the teams that did the studies (which would be comparable to the costs reported here). For the current Survey, the teams had longer times to conduct the studies, so these costs are likely to be higher fidelity.
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This site lists the upcoming meetings of the Decadal Survey panels.
If you're interested, you'd need to watch these meetings as they occur. Videos of the meetings and the presentations from the meetings are not being posted.
Events | Space Studies Board https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events (https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events)
Just a heads up : live stream https://livestream.com/accounts/7036396/events/9471780 starts in 30 minutes.
An open meeting of the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Mars.
This meeting will focus on lessons learned from previous missions that can be applied to proposed or ongoing Mars programs and on technology development for future missions.
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This site lists the upcoming meetings of the Decadal Survey panels.
If you're interested, you'd need to watch these meetings as they occur. Videos of the meetings and the presentations from the meetings are not being posted.
Events | Space Studies Board https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events (https://www.nationalacademies.org/ssb/events)
Just a heads up : live stream https://livestream.com/accounts/7036396/events/9471780 starts in 30 minutes.
An open meeting of the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Mars.
This meeting will focus on lessons learned from previous missions that can be applied to proposed or ongoing Mars programs and on technology development for future missions.
Thanks! This forum gives more-up-to-date info than asking the listed email contact (because I never heard back on my enquiry). Secondly, I see the January 8th Ocean World meeting that was of interest to me is now marked as "closed" compared to "some open, some closed " a few days ago :/
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I watched nearly all of the open session, always interesting to take a deep dive into this stuff :)
Apart from the science presented, there was a segment on program planning, and quite a few
questions about how to reduce mission cost. SpaceX got an indirect reference, however there were
two speakers from LockMart who basically said "it's a question of supply and demand, and there is very
little demand [for Mars missions]".
It seems that exploring the Martian subsurface will provide big science payback, but that requires drilling to a
decent depth (10-100km), as well as rovers that can travel 100s of km rather than 100s of meters. If SpaceX can
provide a launch vehicle for that type of mission, it would be a real game changer.
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I watched nearly all of the open session, always interesting to take a deep dive into this stuff :)
Apart from the science presented, there was a segment on program planning, and quite a few
questions about how to reduce mission cost. SpaceX got an indirect reference, however there were
two speakers from LockMart who basically said "it's a question of supply and demand, and there is very
little demand [for Mars missions]".
It seems that exploring the Martian subsurface will provide big science payback, but that requires drilling to a
decent depth (10-100km), as well as rovers that can travel 100s of km rather than 100s of meters. If SpaceX can
provide a launch vehicle for that type of mission, it would be a real game changer.
I also watched some of the Mars presentations with interest. I had not read or heard much about all the Mars drilling options before which is why I liked the presentations. I'd love to see more open sessions to learn more.
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I watched nearly all of the open session, always interesting to take a deep dive into this stuff :)
Apart from the science presented, there was a segment on program planning, and quite a few
questions about how to reduce mission cost. SpaceX got an indirect reference, however there were
two speakers from LockMart who basically said "it's a question of supply and demand, and there is very
little demand [for Mars missions]".
It seems that exploring the Martian subsurface will provide big science payback, but that requires drilling to a
decent depth (10-100km), as well as rovers that can travel 100s of km rather than 100s of meters. If SpaceX can
provide a launch vehicle for that type of mission, it would be a real game changer.
I also watched some of the Mars presentations with interest. I had not read or heard much about all the Mars drilling options before which is why I liked the presentations. I'd love to see more open sessions to learn more.
Today's Mars meeting (agenda attached) was changed from "open" to "closed" at the last moment. Disappointing. I checked the agenda and links yesterday, called in today at 1:30pm, and "nope, closed". The NAS page (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-mars-meeting-no-7) says This meeting originally had an open session component. However, due to schedule conflicts, we have deferred the subject matter discussion to a later date. As of 11 January 2021 at 7:00pm, this meeting will have no open session component.
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This Friday's Ocean Worlds panel will have open presentation on a Europa lander concept and an Enceladus orbilander.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13)
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This Friday's Ocean Worlds panel will have open presentation on a Europa lander concept and an Enceladus orbilander.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13)
Thanks! It was already in my calendar and I am looking forward to it.
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The rules are that an open meeting can be closed (if there are no outside speakers), but a closed meeting cannot be opened. So if we are planning a meeting with speakers we list an open meeting, but if the speakers cannot make it, then we make that a closed meeting. The speaker was unavailable, so they changed to a closed meeting only and will have that speaker at an open meeting later.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
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This Friday's Ocean Worlds panel will have open presentation on a Europa lander concept and an Enceladus orbilander.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-15-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-13)
Thanks! It was already in my calendar and I am looking forward to it.
PS: As mentioned in the Europa Lander thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42973.msg2179883#msg2179883), the NASA websites
https://oceanworldslab.jpl.nasa.gov
and
https://oceanworldslab.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/
provide some great lists with background research on Europa, Enceladus et al
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A copy of the slides used at the presentation of Enceladus Life Finder (ELF) to PSDS: Ocean worlds and Small Dwarfs, Meeting #14 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-22-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-14) in the other "Enceladus" thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40583.msg2183141#msg2183141).
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A copy of the screenshots and slides used at the presentation of "Calypso: A Titan Sea Probe" at PSDS: Ocean worlds and Small Dwarfs, Meeting #14 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-22-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-14). Relates to many previously discussed Saturn proposals like ELF, Oceanus and more (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39263.msg1719302#msg1719302) as well as Orbilander (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40583.msg2174233#msg2174233).
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A copy of the screenshots and slides used at the presentation of "Calypso: A Titan Sea Probe" at PSDS: Ocean worlds and Small Dwarfs, Meeting #14 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-22-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-14). Relates to many previously discussed Saturn proposals like ELF, Oceanus and more (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39263.msg1719302#msg1719302) as well as Orbilander (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40583.msg2174233#msg2174233).
And as Kraken Mare was in the Calypso study as well, this might be interesting as well https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/01/astronomers-estimate-titans-largest-sea-1000-feet-deep Pointer to the journal article in there.
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Attached a copy of the screenshots and slides from 4 presentations and speakers at Planetary Science Decadal Survey (PSDS) Panel on Mars M8 Open Session, Jan 29th 2021 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-29-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-mars-meeting-no-8) though I missed the first 10+ minutes or so.
A nice surprise to me was to find SpaceX Dr. Paul Wooster on the panel list. When I followed the presentation, I was struck that the Mars NASA PoR/Vision is so different from SpaceX vision in terms in of <everything>. How to optimize (public) resources for Mars and maximize science, exploration and settlement? Then again, information gathering was one of the goals today.
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Attached a copy of the screenshots and slides from 4 presentations and speakers at Planetary Science Decadal Survey (PSDS) Panel on Mars M8 Open Session, Jan 29th 2021 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/01-29-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-mars-meeting-no-8) though I missed the first 10+ minutes or so.
A nice surprise to me was to find SpaceX Dr. Paul Wooster on the panel list. When I followed the presentation, I was struck that the Mars NASA PoR/Vision is so different from SpaceX vision in terms in of <everything>. How to optimize (public) resources for Mars and maximize science, exploration and settlement? Then again, information gathering was one of the goals today.
You can re-watch the recorded live stream for the time being. https://livestream.com/nasem/events/9503099/videos/216814593
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I watched the livestream of the Mars M8 open session, Jan 29th. I will post some notes about what was said, and follow that with my own opinions and ideas.
Session notes
1/ The SpaceX Mars transportation system depends upon methane and oxygen production from local resources on Mars. Oxygen can be produced from the atmosphere but methane production requires hydrogen from martian ice.
2/ SpaceX is interested in ice with no more than two meters of overburden.
3/ Using existing data, SpaceX thinks they have identified some locations where ice is highly likely to be present.
4/ SpaceX wants to land between 40 degrees north and south and they think ice is present north of 30 degrees north.
5/ Hydrated minerals are another possible water resource.
6/ To support site selection for their landings, SpaceX would like an ice mapping Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) with 1m depth resolution. They would like a replacement for the Hirise camera and the Crism mineral mapper on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), with higher resolution.
7/ The In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) community would like a mission landed on the ice deposits to determine ground truth for the remote sensing and to collect geotechnical data to help design extraction technology.
8/ The human exploration side of NASA (HEDS) sees information on dust, radiation, ISRU and landing as their main data needs.
9/ HEDS is currently considering an opposition class mission involving a Venus flyby arriving no earlier than 2035. This would have a short 30 day surface stay with little opportunity for science. They would preposition supplies on the surface before landing rather than relying on ISRU.
10/ HEDS and SpaceX mentioned weather observation and communications relay assets as being useful. Deep space network infrastructure is important for everyone.
11/ Planetary protection considerations are a major issue for manned landings.
12/ The Icemapper mission is an engineering driven mission which would return data by 2030. It uses a radar. The scientists talked about 'making lemonade' out of it. It appears to have international involvement from the Canadians and the Italians. It seems to be the result of a collaboration which evolved outside of normal procedures.
My opinions
1/ Everybody needs a capability to do landing site selection and a replacement for MRO is needed in the next decade. Both manned and unmanned programs need capabilities for ice mapping, mineral mapping, comms relay and a high resolution camera. The MORIE proposal would do a very nice job of meeting everybody's needs, but it is a little over the New Frontiers cost cap which will make it difficult to afford.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2020-04/Day2/15_MORIE_for_MEPAG_post.pdf
However if science, HEDS and international partners all wish to contribute then maybe it is affordable.
2/ In the long term, the human exploration of mars is going to require finding the ground ice deposits and figuring out how to extract them.
3/ There seems to be broad interest in a lander which would drill into the ice deposits to provide ground truth and obtain data for designing extraction schemes.
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Earlier today, I was listening to Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Ocean Worlds and Dwarf Planets Meeting 16 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/02-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-16). While I had to jump out early, I did follow the discussion by Dr. Carolyn Mercer. I liked the explanation of three objectives (1) autonomy, (2) radiation hardened devices, and (3) communication through kilometers of ice , and maybe a distant (4) sample return, but I wondered why there was no objective "propulsion"?
The Ocean worlds are all far away. Talk of missions that lasts a career-time is mind-blowing. If there was a way to reduce travel time by ~2x (from e.g. 16 years to 8 ) in the next decade then the missions get easier, the instruments can be newer, nuclear is an option again, and you get more science out of it? Sure, "autonomy" or AI/ML is a hot topic but travel time in the solar system seems just as relevant to get more science IMHO. I thought some encouragement for "propulsion improvements" in form prototypes of, e.g., PPPL plasmoid thruster / magnetic reconnection thruster (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52926.0) or better version of VASIMR (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34788.320) should be a high priority for Ocean world travel and missions. Thoughts?
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Earlier today, I was listening to Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Ocean Worlds and Dwarf Planets Meeting 16 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/02-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-16).
For those who can't watch these meetings live (I got caught up in another meeting this morning), some of the meetings that are shared on Live Stream are posted here for later viewing:
https://livestream.com/watch/search?q=psds (https://livestream.com/watch/search?q=psds)
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Earlier today, I was listening to Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032: Panel on Ocean Worlds and Dwarf Planets Meeting 16 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/02-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-16). While I had to jump out early, I did follow the discussion by Dr. Carolyn Mercer. I liked the explanation of three objectives (1) autonomy, (2) radiation hardened devices, and (3) communication through kilometers of ice , and maybe a distant (4) sample return, but I wondered why there was no objective "propulsion"?
The Ocean worlds are all far away. Talk of missions that lasts a career-time is mind-blowing. If there was a way to reduce travel time by ~2x (from e.g. 16 years to 8 ) in the next decade then the missions get easier, the instruments can be newer, nuclear is an option again, and you get more science out of it? Sure, "autonomy" or AI/ML is a hot topic but travel time in the solar system seems just as relevant to get more science IMHO. I thought some encouragement for "propulsion improvements" in form prototypes of, e.g., PPPL plasmoid thruster / magnetic reconnection thruster (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52926.0) or better version of VASIMR (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34788.320) should be a high priority for Ocean world travel and missions. Thoughts?
Maybe you missed the point that she was talking about a specific program.
Grin, I didn't miss that :) She mentioned about a dozen of programs and studies but spent more time on that program (was it called "ColdTech2"?) compared to others. That lead to an assumption of relevance and my question above.
For this interested and tax-paying citizen with a PhD and life-long interest in astronomy and space these open meeting are a great way to learn more about the decadal, science objectives and Ocean World plans. And quickly find the knowledge frontier. A few background slides with current programs, scope, priorities, strong and weak points, timelines would have helped me and presumable others.
Looping back, what program or study would the "Oceanworlds propulsion improvements" fit in, and how do the budget, timeline and priority compare with the others above, and do you have a pointer please?
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I thought some encouragement for "propulsion improvements" in form prototypes of, e.g., PPPL plasmoid thruster / magnetic reconnection thruster (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52926.0) or better version of VASIMR (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34788.320) should be a high priority for Ocean world travel and missions. Thoughts?
I suspect propulsion technology will be dealt with in some other panel. And I don't think that exotic and very immature tech like VASIMIR and PPPL is suitable for the science program to fund. A completely new propulsion technology like that would probably require a multi-billion $ development program even if it was technically feasible, and the science community doesn't have that kind of cash.
I also think there are some much simpler ways to improve propulsion capabilities. Nuclear-electric propulsion could be greatly improved if there was a heat engine which was matched to the power and voltage needs of an ion thruster. Thermoelectric converters are very good for small, durable power sources, but they are only about 5% efficient at converting heat into electricity. A heat engine like a stirling engine could achieve 20-30% efficiency which means you can get away with a lower mass heat source. However heat engines lose efficiency if you scale them down and for a 100W power source like an MMRTG they aren't worth the trouble. For a 5000 W ion thruster a heat engine makes a lot more sense. (Heat engine is a general name for things like internal combustion engines, jet engines and steam turbines. They are very common.)
Another possibility is a long life LOX/H2 stage. The JWST sunshade keeps that telescope at something like 50K, which is cold enough to keep O2 liquid and cold enough to dramatically reduce the heat flow into a 20K hydrogen tank. One of the instrument cryocoolers on JWST keeps the temperature down to about 8K, which would be cold enough to liquefy hydrogen boil-off.
The problem in both cases is cost. Gravity assist flybys are cheap. Even if they add an extra year to the mission that only means an extra $20 million in operating cost. It is hard for new propulsion technologies to compete with that.
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https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/02-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-16 (https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/02-12-2021/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-panel-on-ocean-worlds-and-dwarf-planets-meeting-16)
I watched the livestream of this session. I will write some notes about what was said, and then follow with my own opinions.
Session report
The session had a lot on programs and processes and not too much on specific technologies.
1/ Headquarters guy expressed the view that any life finding mission should return a definitive yes or no answer and not a maybe. He felt that people should focus on doing great science and not worry about funding or schedule. He pointed out that opportunities to go to the outer solar system are rare. He felt that the science community should consider a deep penetration of the Europa ice shell to reach the underlying ocean. He thought this was hard but not impossible.
2/ The biologist representing planetary protection partially disagreed with that view. She said that there is no accepted definition of 'life' even on earth. She felt that gathering data on life was important even if that data did not produce a definitive yes or no result on life.
3/ Sample return from the outer solar system was thought to be hard but not crazy. (at Enceladus)
4/ NASA doesn't want to have to invent new technologies for every mission. However, maintaining an industrial base to sustain technologies like rad hard electronics is a problem. There is no commercial market for some technologies that NASA wants.
5/ Current spacecraft technology doesn't support mission lengths over 14 years without additional testing.
6/ Planetary protection mentioned contamination from exhaust plumes as an issue for both Europa and the moon. She said the Artemis and CLPS programs on the moon would be a proving ground for planetary protection technologies.
7/ What is the target? This is a key question when deciding on what technologies to fund.
My opinions
1/ I can't disagree more with the Headquarters guy. If you let the scientists build their dream mission you end up with a $50 billion mission that Congress won't fund. Expected budgets are a key constraint.
2/ The cost of maintaining an industrial base to provide the technology for planetary probes is real constraint on missions. For example, the RTG program costs NASA the equivalent of a New Frontiers mission every decade. NASA flies just enough missions to make the RTG industrial base worth the cost. The Europeans do not, and therefore they can't consider any missions beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
3/ There is no point developing technology which doesn't have a big enough market to sustain it. In my opinion the Kilopower reactor falls firmly into this category.
4/ NASA should focus on technologies which are useful for multiple targets, or on technologies needed for missions that are very likely to fly in the next 20 years. NASA should not bother with developing technologies needed to penetrate the ice shell on Europa at the current time.
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... snip ...
2/ The cost of maintaining an industrial base to provide the technology for planetary probes is real constraint on missions. For example, the RTG program costs NASA the equivalent of a New Frontiers mission every decade. NASA flies just enough missions to make the RTG industrial base worth the cost. The Europeans do not, and therefore they can't consider any missions beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
3/ There is no point developing technology which doesn't have a big enough market to sustain it. In my opinion the Kilopower reactor falls firmly into this category.
4/ NASA should focus on technologies which are useful for multiple targets, or on technologies needed for missions that are very likely to fly in the next 20 years.
Planetary science as done by NASA would do even better than it does currently if they up'd their cadence by something like a factor or 2 or 4 or 10. The issues that you cite would be much less problematic if the costs were shared over a scale of 100s of flights. The costs to fly per mission could be dramatically reduced if spacecraft were produced in units of 100s instead of 1's. The cost of launch is already dramatically falling ....
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Yes, a lot more would be possible if Congress would double the budget! :D However, US scientists are doing quite well, especially relative to the Europeans or the Japanese.
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3/ There is no point developing technology which doesn't have a big enough market to sustain it.
I can't disagree with this enough. Both in technology development in general, and in aerospace in particular, technology development and its commercial application are often separated by years to decades. Some even as vital as GNSS are commercially non-viable and only exist because a non-commercial funding source exists (Navstar would never have launched if it was required to be sustained by the market first). Even orbital rocket launch technologies took 50 years to go from technologically viable (Sputnik) to market-driven (Falcon 1). RTGs are another example, and even regular nuclear power took 14 years for commercialisation. Or Chalcogenide semiconductors: Ovonic PCM was invented in the 60s, and commercialised in the 2010s.
Requiring market self-sustainment from newly developed technologies is effectively a halt to technology development.
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The cost of launch is already dramatically falling ....
It is only a fraction of the overall mission cost. For fun, look up the total life cycle cost of the Perseverance mission. Then figure out what percentage of that was the launch cost. A friend of mine used to run NASA's astrophysics program a long time ago and told me that even if the launch was free, he had a hard time paying for the spacecraft.
I believe that a bigger challenge for the planetary program is the increase in costs of missions. The two Discovery missions in development, Lucy and Psyche, have life cycle costs almost double their predecessors even taking inflation into account. The Psyche mission, for example, doesn't appear to me to be substantially more complicated than the Dawn mission, but it's costs are projected to be not quite double. (InSight was also more expensive, but much of that was due to a two year delay.) Dragonfly looks to be approximately double the cost of the previous New Frontiers missions (although some of that will be due to inflation - the bulk of the mission operations costs won't occur for 15+ years).
I would love to see an analysis of the reasons for this. NASA did change the accounting rules for both the Discovery and New Frontiers missions (with good reasons). Are mission teams just acting rationally and using all dollars offered to them?
Or are their trends in mission development and operations that I don't know about that are driving costs?
Or are the remaining compelling missions that can win competitions just more complicated or long lasting (higher operation costs) and with that comes more expensive missions?
With the knowledge available to me, I can determine what mix of these or other factors appear to be driving mission costs up. Perhaps the Decadal Survey in progress with weigh in on this question.
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I’ve got a theory on the rising costs thing. Not intended to explain all of it.
The costs of pushing the edge technologically are rising, in lots of areas, but most of all in areas where the edge has been repeatedly pushed. We want to make a better probe than last time. Well we weren’t being lazy last time - we pushed the edge of sensor technology to get there. To beat that, your choices are to wait a long time until the surrounding technological base makes pushing further easy, or push harder. It’s what I call a technological salient issue - pushing any particular thing further and further (without waiting for related and enabling tech to get substantially better first) gets more expensive. The salient you’re extending from the broader level of technology just keeps getting higher, with costs rising accordingly.
Of course that makes me wonder: budgetarily, what are the drivers of cost? They do have breakdowns...
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I thought some encouragement for "propulsion improvements" in form prototypes of, e.g., PPPL plasmoid thruster / magnetic reconnection thruster (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52926.0) or better version of VASIMR (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=34788.320) should be a high priority for Ocean world travel and missions. Thoughts?
I suspect propulsion technology will be dealt with in some other panel. And I don't think that exotic and very immature tech like VASIMIR and PPPL is suitable for the science program to fund. A completely new propulsion technology like that would probably require a multi-billion $ development program even if it was technically feasible, and the science community doesn't have that kind of cash.
I also think there are some much simpler ways to improve propulsion capabilities.
Thank you for your response. As a Decadal Survey is an investment in the future, I would naively expect some "bets" or small investments in enabling technologies which would reduce the LEO to target transit times by a very significant factor to enable new types of missions. Which is where my question came from. As we all know, it is important here to distinguish between that goal "fast transit" and implementation "whatever solution we can prototype in x time for budget y". Silicon Valley is good on limited-time, fixed-schedule prototyping.
As you mention in a later post, and was also mentioned in the presentation, there is a limited, projected lifetime of ~14 years for missions. Part of it relates to the lifetime of NTGs I understand. I think you are saying that the LEO to destination propulsion studies are not part of the Decadal Survey. Good to know.
The problem in both cases is cost. Gravity assist flybys are cheap. Even if they add an extra year to the mission that only means an extra $20 million in operating cost. It is hard for new propulsion technologies to compete with that.
Sure, but just because it is hard does not mean that it should be ignored. On the contrary, when we know that an enabling technology is necessary in the future then I would expect some small investments Silicon Valley style to develop them.
On a humorous note, the discussion of "something new is hard" pops up in every generation. I would think that when we had horse and carriage for transportation and some tinkerers with loud, unreliable, crazy, crappy gasoline cars, plenty of people must have remarked "why bother with that noisy thing when my horse works fine?" and "maybe it will work in the future but not now".
Same discussion for electric cars vs gasoline cars in the last 10 years, or quick DNA/RNA/gene analysis. Who remembers that around the year 2000 the first human genome was sequenced? And now we can do 23andme for home use. Which means that in a few years you can sequence in minutes at home based on a CVS buy. Which nicely loops back to the Decadal because we might have sensors in a few years to sample a natural, transient plume or impact plume during a flyby for DNA/RNA/similarity to Earth-based bacteria which is why I also liked the presentation a few weeks ago on Enceladus et al and plume sampling.
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The cost is rising because fundamentally there is no incentive to reduce cost. NASA is certainly not doing it, and as far as I can see cost is not a factor in these science mission competitions, which means if I propose a mission with 20% of the cost to achieve 80% of the value, I'll lose. Doubly so if I propose to use something with no heritage and/or is new. (And don't get me started on flagship missions which basically have no competition at all, and it's done similar to how SLS is sole sourced to Boeing) This environment is not at all conductive to cost reduction, it's conductive to cost inflation, similar to how EELV is when ULA is an monopoly.
It will take multi-year or decade concerted effort to change this, and it's pretty much hopeless when the insiders have an attitude of "it costs what it costs".
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The fundamental reason there’s no money in the decadal planetary science survey for novel propulsion technologies is it’s not for that. NASA has other parts that invest in technologies of that kind. I get it’s something you want, but it’s fundamental tech and there will *always* be an argument for investing program funds in fundamental improvement rather than actually doing something with the technology today.
This literally never ending tension is why there are different organizations and different pots of money. So we actually do some science with the technology we have, *and* work on enabling tech to do better in the future.
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@leovinus....There is a separate part of NASA, the exploration technology budget, which got about $1 billion in 2020 to fund new technologies. They are funding solar electric propulsion including a 50kw thruster which I think is intended for the manned program. They are funding a few things on Perseverance like the heat shield instrumentation, the terrain reference navigation and the ISRU experiment. They also fund laser comm demonstrations. They are also funding a drill for lunar ice. There is a pot of money there for emerging technology as well.
I don't know how much influence the decadal survey has over that technology budget.
@edzieba....I'm using the word 'market' in a very broad sense. There are no private sector customers for RTGs but there is strong political support from the science community which translates into government funding. The science community continues to propose missions which depend on RTGs.
From the beginning of spaceflight the development of rockets was driven by the demand from national security customers for intelligence on the Soviet Union. Again, that wasn't a private sector market, but the intelligence produced by satellites was very highly valued by people who controlled large budgets. So there were 'customers' and a 'market' demand for rockets which continues to this day.
The science priorities from the decadal translate into funding and therefore market demand for space technology.
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Mars Meeting 3: Session report
1/ Mars Sample return needs an extra $1 billion and the launch should be delayed until 2028.
2/ It is important that launch doesn't slip any further than this because the 2030 and 2032 launch windows are unfavorable.
3/ The mass allowance for the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) has been reduced, increasing risk. There was discussion of the possibility of splitting the MAV and the fetch rover into two separate landers.
4/ Some people suggested adding some basic scientific instrumentation to the fetch rover for use after the sample return mission has departed. Others are reluctant to add any further complexity to what is already a very complex project. The fetch rover already has tight margins.
5/ Mars scientists want a separate funding line for Mars missions in addition to sample return. This should be new money.
6/ There are 4 areas of research that scientists are interested in pursuing:
(a) Diverse ancient environments and habitability
(b) Subsurface structure, composition and possible life
(c) Ice and geologically relevant climate change
(d) Atmospheric processes and climate variability
My opinions
The cost overruns on sample return are very bad news which means something else is going to have to be dropped from future plans. The ice giant mission will probably have to be kicked into the next decade. Also Dragonfly and MSL will have to be funded concurrently and I wonder if there is enough money to do this.
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The cost overruns on sample return are very bad news which means something else is going to have to be dropped from future plans. The ice giant mission will probably have to be kicked into the next decade. Also Dragonfly and MSL will have to be funded concurrently and I wonder if there is enough money to do this.
Were the cost overruns the recommended extra funding from the independent review panel? Mass margin on the MAV is a key concern. It was hard enough already.
If I remember correctly, the best Neptune launch dates are ~2030 and the best Uranus dates are ~2034. The latter date would probably fit better with what I see as the possible funding profiles. However, an ice giant mission likely will have stiff competition from landers for Europa and Enceladus I suspect (and perhaps the Decadal Survey will find other high priority flagship concepts, too).
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@leovinus....There is a separate part of NASA, the exploration technology budget, which got about $1 billion in 2020 to fund new technologies. They are funding solar electric propulsion including a 50kw thruster which I think is intended for the manned program. They are funding a few things on Perseverance like the heat shield instrumentation, the terrain reference navigation and the ISRU experiment. They also fund laser comm demonstrations. They are also funding a drill for lunar ice. There is a pot of money there for emerging technology as well.
I don't know how much influence the decadal survey has over that technology budget.
Thank you! I'll try to find background articles and read more.
One more question in the meantime please. On the "ice drill" for various destination from Moon to Mars to Europa. Has the Decadal survey a view on the relative risk and science return of "one complicated drill" vs "a set of N impactors (to various depths) which cause artificial plumes to analyze"? Science return of impactors vs drilling vs risk vs cost?
We have seen the Insight mole fail. One drill or mole is a single point of failure. We see SX launch 60+ satellites in one go and have seen various impactors at work on the Moon and asteroids. I think I heard concern about the difficultly of drilling deep on Europa to the point that that is not feasible at the moment. But we do see plume analysis proposals for Enceladus. If the plume analysis is easier to productize than you can potentially get more science about N impactors aiming at various depths compared to using drills?
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@vjkane...Yes, the 'cost overrun' or whatever you want to call it is the extra funding recommended by the independent review panel. If people with experience of other large missions are saying that MSR is going to cost at least X then I think it is very unlikely to cost less than that. While there is no way to know what the final decadal survey report will say, the laws of arithmetic will hold. More for MSR means less for other things. That means that a Flagship, a New Frontiers or a Discovery project will have to be dropped.
A 2030 launch date which is fixed by orbital mechanics seems to be too close to MSR and Dragonfly. 2034 might work, so Uranus might be an option. The money might be better spent on New Frontiers, Discovery and a future Mars orbiter to replace MRO.
@leovinus....Impactors and drills are very different strategies. The plume from an impactor is analyzed from a distance by a spectrometer on a telescope. This provides much more limited information that the types of instruments which can be fed by a drill. Flying through the plume from an impact has never been attempted because of the risk of running into a spacecraft destroying pebble thrown up by the impact. The Insight mole was a novel device built by the German space agency which had never flown in space before. Under Martian gravity and soil conditions it did not work. I think it is appropriate for NASA to take some technical risks which result in occasional failures. SpaceX is also willing to fail, as we saw in their recent Starship test.
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@leovinus....Impactors and drills are very different strategies. The plume from an impactor is analyzed from a distance by a spectrometer on a telescope. This provides much more limited information that the types of instruments which can be fed by a drill. Flying through the plume from an impact has never been attempted because of the risk of running into a spacecraft destroying pebble thrown up by the impact. The Insight mole was a novel device built by the German space agency which had never flown in space before. Under Martian gravity and soil conditions it did not work. I think it is appropriate for NASA to take some technical risks which result in occasional failures. SpaceX is also willing to fail, as we saw in their recent Starship test.
On the plume sampling, I liked the recent ELF presentation (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=40583.msg2183141#msg2183141) as that had some speed limits in it which I had not seen before and which addressed some of your concerns.
On risk, I am all in favor of taking some calculated risk. On the whole, I was very impressed by the DLR on-Earth soil analysis to design and later fault check the drill. Very impressive, done with "Deutsche Gründlichkeit". However, it also shows the limits of what we can simulate on conditions on other planets. Which is also why I often think of splitting one instrument or approach in two independent measurements to spread risk. Of course with the additional challenge to the engineers to not increase cost and mass.
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Mars Meeting 9 :February 9th 2021: Session report
Ice mapping radars :
1/ The P-band radar proposed for MORIE was cost prohibitive and the study unrealistic.
2/The Mars Ice Mapper is built around a Canadian L-band radar with Japan providing parts of the spacecraft.
3/ The Japanese would like to add a microwave sensor and perhaps even an EDL demonstration but probably don't have the funds.
4/Mars Ice Mapper would like to launch between 2026 and 2028 but money is still a hurdle for the project.
Mars Sample Return :
1/ The European speaker described MSR as "a whole series of single point failures strung together."
2/ He warned against adding complexity to MSR and "Christmas tree syndrome." (This applies to the idea of adding science instruments to the fetch rover)
3/ The fetch rover will have to move at 10x the speed of current rovers and feature autonomous navigation.
Japan's Mars Moons Explorer :
The hope is that the Phobos regolith will preserve information on the ancient martian surface. There might be some martian samples mixed into the Phobos regolith
UAE mission:
1/UAE has a 100 year plan for Mars and will try to provide a career path for their scientists.
2/UAE mission will study the links between the atmosphere and the exosphere and will study water and oxygen escape. They will also study episodic events like dust storms.
3/ I think the UAE speaker said they are planning a moon rover for 2024. That is the first I have heard of that.
Early Martian atmospheres (faint young sun paradox) :
1/ Mars had no permanent atmosphere earlier than 4.1 billion years ago due to strong EUV emission from the early sun.
2/ There is plenty of evidence for a warm early Mars however modelling the atmosphere that can produce those warm temps remains a challenge.
3/ The latest idea is that the atmosphere was a mixture of H2 and methane. However, the hydrogen escapes quickly.
4/ Another possibility is the the early sun was warmer than expected and then went through a period of mass loss. It would be helpful to find a record of the early solar wind, possibly from the moon.
5/ Large numbers of massive impacts could produce melting but the timing is wrong for the formation of valley networks.
6/ Ammonia in the atmosphere would work but it is photochemically unstable
7/ N20, H202, CF3Br, CF2Cl2 are exotic possibilities for greenhouse gases
8/ If SO2 or H2S was present the climate would be affected by aerosols
9/ Better mineralogy data and topographic data from a mission like MORRIE would help to advance the science. Five meter scale allows the mineral composition of individual outcrops to be seen
10/ A helicopter survey of an ancient Noachian terrain with imaging, magnetic field and mineralogy instruments would also be very helpful.
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Article by Alan Stern in regards to a Pluto orbiter and the planetary decadal survey.
https://astronomy.com/magazine/2019/10/return-to-pluto
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There was a discussion of telecommunications relays for Mars in the Mars Ice Mapper thread and I thought this would be an more appropriate place to continue the discussion.
The first question to be asked is what is the long term need? Assuming a 25 year life for orbiters and a 15 year life for rovers, by 2030 the NASA fleet will be down to MAVEN and Perseverance. If MAVEN lasts 25 years that would take it to 2038 while Perseverance should be productive to 2036. Perseverance is very well equipped with science instruments and it is exploring a scientifically rich region. The Europeans might support Perseverance with Trace Gas Orbiter although their main priority will be ExoMars.
Given this situation a relay on Mars Ice Mapper would be a welcome addition.
A dedicated Mars telecommunications orbiter would only happen if there is a new generation of Mars missions in the 2030s. This will be an issue for the next Decadal. NASA will have to decide if sample return is one and done, or if there will be a follow on mission which uses the technologies developed a second time. ESA will face a similar decision about the Exomars rover. One possible future could be a European sample collecting rover feeding an American sample return rocket.
The agencies should consider if lower latency communication links would improve rover productivity. One way light time to Mars is between 5 and 20 minutes. Currently the rovers wait hours for relay passes. If the rover drivers saw the results of their commands more quickly then maybe faster operations would be possible.
In addition to rover comms a telecoms relay could provide critical coverage for EDL activities. Also, it could provide a high data rate relay for sensors like cameras and imaging spectrometers in low polar orbits. Another need is for communications with small, low power transmitters on the surface. If Ingenuity wasn't tethered to the rover by the communications link, it could go off on an independent mission of exploration.
The downside of a telecoms orbiter is that it represents overhead expense which takes away from science. However, there are currently $6 billion worth of rovers on the surface, not counting the Chinese. Making a small investment to make rovers more productive might be worth it for future missions.
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Assuming a 25 year life for orbiters and a 15 year life for rovers, by
Those are not the design lifetimes, so you cannot plan on those lifetimes.
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Assuming a 25 year life for orbiters and a 15 year life for rovers, by
Those are not the design lifetimes, so you cannot plan on those lifetimes.
Blackstar,
My (naive, public) perception is that design lifetimes are generally well exceeded for major projects, though often with some reduction of capability. Is this true in practice? Is it perhaps a reflection of designing for a high probability of not failing *before* the design life is over, so the average failure point is then usually well past?
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My (naive, public) perception is that design lifetimes are generally well exceeded for major projects, though often with some reduction of capability. Is this true in practice? Is it perhaps a reflection of designing for a high probability of not failing *before* the design life is over, so the average failure point is then usually well past?
There are spacecraft that die soon after their design lifetimes. There are also ones that substantially exceed them. But the fact that some die pretty much at the design lifetime tells you something.
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Assuming a 25 year life for orbiters and a 15 year life for rovers, by
Those are not the design lifetimes, so you cannot plan on those lifetimes.
My impression is that 90-95% of missions exceed their design lifetime. For planning communications needs I think you should think in terms of expected lifetime, which I would define as the lifetime that has a 50% probability of being exceeded. Having thought about this some more I think 20 years might be a better expectation for orbiters. Landsat 5 managed 29 years, but apart from that the only ones I can find over 20 are NOAA-15 (23 years) and Terra (22 years).
Perseverance will not go the way Spirit and Opportunity did because the RTG supplies heat and is not affected by dust storms. The wheels are better built than Curiosity, but much of the rest of the design is similar to that rover, which is still operating well after almost 10 years. Much of Perseverance's capability is in touch science instruments, so it won't be affected by drill failures and it doesn't depend on power hungry lab instruments like SAM. The Jezero Crater region is even richer in science targets than Gale Crater and the North East Syrtis hydrothermal area is potentially within reach with a long drive. I think 15 to 20 years is a reasonable expectation for the lifetime of that rover.
The bottom line is that Perseverance is probably going to outlive all current and planned relay capabilities.
When can we expect a new generation of Mars missions? MSL and Dragonfly are likely to consume all the resources up until 2026 or 2028 if they overrun. If the Decadal goes for an Ice Giants mission then the launch windows for Uranus are 2033 and 2034. For Neptune the launch window seems to be 2031, while Saturn appears to have viable launch windows throughout the 2030s. The bottom line here is that large Mars missions will likely have to wait until the mid to late 2030s.
So some sort of a gap filler is needed to support Perseverance.
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So some sort of a gap filler is needed to support Perseverance.
As the attached slide shows from 11/21, Mars relay assets through the end of the decade seem to be robust. Perseverance, assuming no other failures, will be starting to experience declining power from its decaying power source. NASA and ESA's sample return mission will have left the surface.
In addition, the international Mars ice mapper -- still a concept but one being vigorously being pursued -- would launch in 2028 or so. While it hasn't been mentioned in any of the material I've seen on line, I can't imagine it not have a relay capacity.
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This is a 2009 JPL study of the lifespan of some 700-odd satellites (military, civil, commercial). Per Figure 8, out of a few dozen scientific satellites, all but a couple scientific satellites exceeded their design lifetimes.
https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/44955/12-5999_A1b.pdf?sequence=1
But the dispersal is all over the place. There are satellites that lived 10-15 years that started with design lifetimes anywhere from 1.5 to 9 years. There are satellites with 5-year design lifetimes that lived 6-7 years and others that lived 14-16 years.
So yes, you can be assured that something on the order of 95% of all science missions (or at least satellites) will exceed their design lifetimes. But there is no assurance regarding how long they will exceed their design lifetimes.
Hope this helps.
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Along the lines of a Mars-orbit comms relay, I'm surprised we don't already have a deep space sat for relay and redundancy. It seems like a simple satellite should be sent to Sun-Earth L4 or L5 to angle communications around Sol, perpetually covering Earth's blind spot. With all of the different planetary missions, there will be increasingly frequent occurrences of conjunction blackouts. Sooner or later a dust storm, CME, etc. will hit just when we are unable to do anything about it and scrap a multi-billion dollar mission. Even if it simply extends mission availability times it would be worth it.
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Along the lines of a Mars-orbit comms relay, I'm surprised we don't already have a deep space sat for relay and redundancy. It seems like a simple satellite should be sent to Sun-Earth L4 or L5 to angle communications around Sol, perpetually covering Earth's blind spot. With all of the different planetary missions, there will be increasingly frequent occurrences of conjunction blackouts. Sooner or later a dust storm, CME, etc. will hit just when we are unable to do anything about it and scrap a multi-billion dollar mission. Even if it simply extends mission availability times it would be worth it.
A communications link depends on both ends. One end of existing deep space links is the deep space network, with large dishes, kW transmitters, very sensitive receivers and a small army of technicians. For a relay to allow for "normal" operation it would have to have capabilities approaching the deep space network. That would be a very ambitious satellite.
A smaller relay satellite, with communications similar to existing probes, might be able to provide low bit rates to the high gain antenna of distant probes. This might be useful for command and control in certain emergencies. It would not allow most normal operations nor the download of a meaningful amount of data. It would not be useful in emergencies where the distant probe could only use a low gain antenna.
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Along the lines of a Mars-orbit comms relay, I'm surprised we don't already have a deep space sat for relay and redundancy. It seems like a simple satellite should be sent to Sun-Earth L4 or L5 to angle communications around Sol, perpetually covering Earth's blind spot. With all of the different planetary missions, there will be increasingly frequent occurrences of conjunction blackouts. Sooner or later a dust storm, CME, etc. will hit just when we are unable to do anything about it and scrap a multi-billion dollar mission. Even if it simply extends mission availability times it would be worth it.
This would be an entire mission for zero science that wouldn't be as good as what we have on the ground. Outside of the couple weeks every two years that mars is behind the sun, it would only be redundancy. It won't have the power for transmitting like our ground facilities do, and it certainly wouldn't have the sensitivity/collecting area either.
It simply isn't worth all the money for that instead of just doing another science mission.
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Along the lines of a Mars-orbit comms relay, I'm surprised we don't already have a deep space sat for relay and redundancy. It seems like a simple satellite should be sent to Sun-Earth L4 or L5 to angle communications around Sol, perpetually covering Earth's blind spot.
A communications link depends on both ends. One end of existing deep space links is the deep space network, with large dishes, kW transmitters, very sensitive receivers and a small army of technicians. For a relay to allow for "normal" operation it would have to have capabilities approaching the deep space network. That would be a very ambitious satellite.
For the transmitting end, I'd agree it would be very hard. But receiving it's not so clear. I've heard rumors (and I stress rumors) of military satellites having very large (hundred meter-ish) unfolding mesh antennas. Achieving low noise should be no problem - very low noise amplifiers are commercially available (See Low Noise Factory (https://www.lownoisefactory.com/) - I think ESA uses these in their ground stations) and work very well when cooled only to the temperatures you can get by staying in the shade. Finally antenna design should be very straightforward when compared to a ground station, as any spillover from the main dish illumination will only hit deep space.
The big question would be how large of a folding antenna you can get that would work at X-band. Comsats currently use folding antennas that work at X and Ka band up to 9 meters in size. If the military rumors are true (that's a big if), and they can reach the tradeoff of 34 meters and X-band operation, then a receiving station should be straightforward.
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Along the lines of a Mars-orbit comms relay, I'm surprised we don't already have a deep space sat for relay and redundancy. It seems like a simple satellite should be sent to Sun-Earth L4 or L5 to angle communications around Sol, perpetually covering Earth's blind spot.
This would be an entire mission for zero science that wouldn't be as good as what we have on the ground. Outside of the couple weeks every two years that mars is behind the sun, it would only be redundancy. It won't have the power for transmitting like our ground facilities do, and it certainly wouldn't have the sensitivity/collecting area either.
It simply isn't worth all the money for that instead of just doing another science mission.
You could do a lot of science with such a facility when it's not looking behind the sun. The rest of the time, having a reasonably sized radio telescope 1 AU from Earth would be enormously helpful. See for example Spektr-R (http://Spektr-R), a radio telescope in Earth orbit. The baseline from a proposed relay would be MUCH larger (eight light minutes, as opposed to 1 light second, so about 500x larger) and the collecting area at least as much. And if looking at targets near the solar poles, you'd get a full set of baselines over a year. These would be by far the highest resolution radio images ever collected.
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There are some surprisingly large deployable antennas out there. The webpage for the Astromesh reflector family claims they are scalable from 6 to 22 meters and that they can operate at up to 50Ghz. This would be more than adequate for X (8 Ghz) and Ka (32 Ghz) band communications. Such an antenna could be vary useful for a Mars communications relay, although I am not sure what it weighs or costs.
https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/astro-aerospace-products-astromesh/
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For a microwave communications link, the the data rate is going to be related to the received power.
Received power = Transmitted power * Effective aperture area of receiver * Effective aperture area of transmitter /( distance**2 * wavelength**2)
(From the Friis transmission equation described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation))
Note that received power and hence data rate is proportional to the area of the transmitting antenna. Also the received power is inversely proportional to the square of the distance and the wavelength. I will use this to estimate possible link performance by analogy to what is already flying at Mars.
The Descanso series provides data on the performance of what is already at Mars.
https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/series13_chapter.html
The maximum Earth Mars distance is 400 million kilometers and the minimum distance is 100 million kilometers. This means the data rate should vary by 16 fold from maximum to minimum distance. Descanso reports a 8 fold variation, from 500 kbits/s to 4 Mbits/s
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter achieves 500kbits/s at maximum distance at X-band (8 Ghz) with a 3m antenna and a 100 Watt transmitter. With a 22m antenna I would estimate a 50 times faster rate.
Could the transmit power be increased? A 1kw transmitter should increase the data rate by a factor of 10. The 100W transmitter requires and input of 172W, so a 1 kw transmitter needs about ten times that. That looks feasible.
What about moving to a higher frequency? Moving from X to Ka band should enable a 16 fold speed up, but much of that is lost due to water vapor absorption in the Earth's atmosphere. Descanso reports that the Ka band transmitter produced about the same data rate with one third of the input power, so a 3 fold speed up from moving to Ka looks possible.
Putting this all together, a rate of 75Mbits/s at maximum Earth Mars distance and 600Mbits/s at minimum distance look feasible using conventional technology.
So what science would an average link speed of 100Mbits/s enable? I calculate that mapping the entire surface at 30cm per pixel at 14 bits/pixel would take 2100 days or a little under 6 years. A multispectral map using 543 channels at 6 meter / pixel and 10 bits/ pixel would take a little under 7 years. Maps of this quality would support landing site selection and would find the most interesting rock outcrops on the planet for a future sample return rover.
You could also speed this up by using more antennas on Earth. The data from Descanso is for a 34 m receive antenna. I estimate that a 70 m antenna should give a four fold speed up.
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How does optical communications compare to this? A chart in a poster from an OPAG meeting appears to show a rate of 1 to 2 Mbits/s at a maximum Earth-Mars distance. This seems to be for the demonstration payload which is flying on Psyche. This only works in clear weather, and it requires a 5 m telescope at the receiving end. I'm not impressed.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/july2014/posters/9-DSOC_OPAG_Poster.pdf
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Another benefit of a Mars Telecom relay could be in improving communications with surface assets. According to Descanso, Mars Curiosity gets a mere 176 bits/s in direct to Earth mode using its 0.28m diameter antenna with a 15W X-band transmitter. A decadal survey White Paper on Observing Mars from Areostationary Orbit estimates that the same system could achieve 5Mbit/s to a relay.
This would enable small missions with low powered transmitters and low gain antennas. One example could be a Mars helicopter. Another could be a network of weather-seismic-methane sniffing stations delivered to the surface by airbags.
Observing Mars from Areostationary Orbit: Benefits and Applications
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20205005976/downloads/Areostationary%20White%20Paper%20-%20final%20version%20-%20amended%20head.pdf
Small Areostationary Telecommunications Orbiter Concepts for Mars in the 2020s
https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/45796/16-0109_A1b.pdf
An areostationary orbiter would only cover about a third of the surface. However, that might be good enough for the early 2030s as Perseverance and Rosalind Franklin are within 120 degrees of longitude.
Another possibility is a relay at Mars L1. This would have the advantage of covering the entire sunlit side of Mars with a single spacecraft. The disadvantage is that L1 is 1 million kilometers sunward of Mars, which is 50 times farther away than areostationary. This which would make communicating with landed assets more difficult.
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Another benefit of a Mars Telecom relay could be in improving communications with surface assets. According to Descanso, Mars Curiosity gets a mere 176 bits/s in direct to Earth mode using its 0.28m diameter antenna with a 15W X-band transmitter. A decadal survey White Paper on Observing Mars from Areostationary Orbit estimates that the same system could achieve 5Mbit/s to a relay.
You know we already have such a system, right? The MRO does almost exactly this for Curiosity. It’s not that it makes this stuff irrelevant of course, but it’s just weird to say it “could achieve” when we’re doing it already.
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Another benefit of a Mars Telecom relay could be in improving communications with surface assets. According to Descanso, Mars Curiosity gets a mere 176 bits/s in direct to Earth mode using its 0.28m diameter antenna with a 15W X-band transmitter. A decadal survey White Paper on Observing Mars from Areostationary Orbit estimates that the same system could achieve 5Mbit/s to a relay.
You know we already have such a system, right? The MRO does almost exactly this for Curiosity. It’s not that it makes this stuff irrelevant of course, but it’s just weird to say it “could achieve” when we’re doing it already.
Yup. There's been some odd speculation in this thread. It doesn't bear much relationship to what is actually going on.
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"You know we already have such a system, right? "
You know we don't already have such a system, right? Or rather, we do now but it consists largely of aging assets which will need replacing soon. If we don't want downtime on the system a replacement is essential.
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The trades mentioned above don't come free.
Add a 22m antenna and you now significantly impact the pointing characteristics of you observatory.
Increase Tx power, you now have additional needed solar array size (also impacts pointing charactaristics).
Now you need bigger wheels, and still more power.
And you need to reject all that additional heat for the increased power to the subsystems.
Then you need a C&DH and telecom (radio) system that supports the increased data rates.
It would be great to have new spacecraft arrive at Mars with telecommunications relay capabilities, and eventually we do need that.
We also need to do more comm to deep space at Ka.
The ground side still has plenty of room to expand capabilities.
DSN is adding stations, and the stations have more receivers and upgraded transmitters. We're seeing more MSPA downlink activities and better coordination across missions to utilize those MSPA opportunities.
Other deep space networks are doing similar.
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There is a basic disconnect here. No one here wouldn't object to a free relay satellite around mars. Everyone would love it.
What is getting ignored is that it comes at the cost of a FULL mars mission. At the price of a full science mission (yes it will cost that much), its not worth it.
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Or rather, we do now but it consists largely of aging assets which will need replacing soon.
Define "soon". At the January 2022 MEPAG meeting it was reported that MAVEN and TGO were expected to remain viable through at least 2030 and MRO nearly as long.
Any asset we launch will start aging the moment it's launched. Sure, it would be great to have more.
https://mepag.jpl.nasa.gov/meeting/2022-01/02_Ianson_Meyer_MEP_MEPAG_Feb_2022.pdf slide 16.
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I'm looking beyond the current decadal here, to the second half of the 2030s. I put it in this thread because it seems like a good place to discuss future plans.
By that time I think NASA might have decided to do another sample return. That will need a new generation of Mars rovers and orbiters. A telecoms relay would only make sense as part of an integrated package of missions, and of course it would have to justify its cost.
I think there are two scenarios where a relay might be worth doing. The first is if you wanted to map the entire surface at high resolution. That would require a much higher capacity link than we have today. Faster communications requires some combination of:
1/Bigger antenna at Mars
2/More powerful transmitter at Mars fed by a large solar panel
3/More antennas on Earth (I'll write about that in another post)
4/ Higher frequencies (possibly light)
The advantage of using a relay are:
1/Multiple missions could share a single asset
2/You avoid the delta-v cost of moving a heavy antenna and solar panel to low Martian orbit
3/ Low orbiting spacecraft are out of sight of Earth and in the dark half the time, while a relay would be in a high orbit with near continuous sunlight and view of Earth.
The second scenario where a relay might be attractive would be if you could speed rover operations by reducing the time delays in communications. Currently they plan everything on a daily cycle, then they have to wait for a communications pass before they see the results of the plan. With a continuous link capable of relaying navigation camera pictures to Earth, a 15 minute operating cycle might be possible. At closest approach, the light time from Earth to Mars is only 5 minutes, so it would be possible to send a command up and see the result within a 15 minute period. That could help to make the rover more productive. Increasing the productivity of a multi-billion dollar rover might justify spending a few hundred million on a telecoms relay.
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I wrote something about the possibility of expanding the number of Earth based antennas in a new thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=55869.0
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I think there are two scenarios where a relay might be worth doing. The first is if you wanted to map the entire surface at high resolution. That would require a much higher capacity link than we have today. Faster communications requires some combination of:
1/Bigger antenna at Mars
2/More powerful transmitter at Mars fed by a large solar panel
3/More antennas on Earth (I'll write about that in another post)
4/ Higher frequencies (possibly light)
Or a return mission with a few kg of tapes or SSD. Really only useful for things like mapping, and it would require patience, and introduce a few more minutes of terror.
With a relatively modest radio or laser link the return vehicle may not need to enter Mars orbit. This would add several hours of terror.
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The new @theNASEM
Decadal Survey on Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023–2032 will be publicly released on April 19.
https://twitter.com/ThePlanetaryGuy/status/1508923934946861059
Paul Byrne
@ThePlanetaryGuy
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You can register to watch the release of the new planetary Decadal Survey here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-public-briefing-registration-310589320017 (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-public-briefing-registration-310589320017)
Join us for the public release of the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey to explore the top science priorities for the field.
About this event
What new discoveries are on the horizon for the next decade of planetary exploration? The Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032 highlights key science questions, identifies priority missions, and presents a comprehensive research strategy that includes both planetary defense and human exploration. The report also recommends ways to support the profession as well as the technologies and infrastructure needed to carry out the science.
Learn more about the decadal survey by joining the National Academies for a public briefing on Tuesday, April 19, 2022 from 2-4pm ET. During the briefing, members of the committee will discuss the report's key findings and take questions from the audience.
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Any bets here to what will be revealed?
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Link from the national academies to watch their planetary decadal report today at 1pm cst.
https://www.nationalacademies.org/event/04-19-2022/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032-public-release-of-the-survey-report
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Number one new priority is a orbiter/probe to Uranus (let the jokes begin!)
https://spacenews.com/planetary-science-decadal-endorses-mars-sample-return-outer-planets-missions/
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For the flagships, it sounds like finishing Mars Sample Return and Europa Clipper are #1, following by Uranus Oriter and Probe at #2, and Enceladus Orbilander at #3 and only if increased funding is available.
Good to see the Enceladus mission ranked. I would have put it higher than the Uranus mission, but that’s just me.
Be interesting to see/hear why specifically other flagship concepts (Neptune, Europa Lander, etc.) did not make the cut.
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Oh well, was hoping they'd pick Neptune & Triton mission, I find it a lot more interesting than Uranus. And definitely more useful than returning a sample from Mars but that's just me.
Surprised they ditched the Europa lander too
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This decadal clocked in at over 700 pages. Last one was just under 400 pages. Muscular.
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I liked the recommendation to create an R&D budget separate from missions. There were some discussions of this around JWST, good to see it taken seriously.
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Surprised they ditched the Europa lander too
You have Clipper and JUICY. It would make no sense to force a lander until you have the data of the orbiters. If the data shows a very compelling science, an Europa lander might well be the Priority 1 for the next decadal. Or the next, I don't remember when will they arrive.
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And with respect to the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56219.0) I love to learn from the pros and Decadal insiders more about how that proposal came together. When we discussed (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33971.msg2138559#msg2138559) gas giants and Neptune, Uranus back in 2020, the UOP proposal did not exist. Right? There was MUSE (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35732) and bunch of papers. Therefore, to an interested outsider, it look like UOP started during the Decadal. Is that correct? If yes then does the Decadal process encourage people to combine existing proposals into something new that is than published at the same time as end report? What was the process here? Thanks for any insights.
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Surprised they ditched the Europa lander too
You have Clipper and JUICY. It would make no sense to force a lander until you have the data of the orbiters. If the data shows a very compelling science, an Europa lander might well be the Priority 1 for the next decadal. Or the next, I don't remember when will they arrive.
Sure, but then again, they're talking about an Enceladus lander before Europa which is surprising.
What is the next step though, when will they decide which missions go ahead? This is just a survey.
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Surprised they ditched the Europa lander too
Europa lander was never a huge decal priority. It was a pet project of a certain politician.
Honestly, a lander right now wouldn't even make sense. We have no idea what the surface would be like, so we'd just be guessing. Also, this ignores that a Europan lander would be like a Venus lander - a short lived mission. The radiation on the surface would wreck the lander in short order. Why spend a flagship mission on 2 months of data when we can get years of data somewhere else instead?
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Cause Europa is still one of the prime candidates for alien life in its subsurface ocean, its one of the best moons to study by far. Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
Do they know more about the surface of Enceladus than Europa?
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Cause Europa is still one of the prime candidates for alien life in its subsurface ocean, its one of the best moons to study by far. Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
Do they know more about the surface of Enceladus than Europa?
Probably has to do with radiation levels. Longer lived lander and relay satellite.
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And with respect to the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56219.0) I love to learn from the pros and Decadal insiders more about how that proposal came together. When we discussed (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33971.msg2138559#msg2138559) gas giants and Neptune, Uranus back in 2020, the UOP proposal did not exist. Right? There was MUSE (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35732) and bunch of papers. Therefore, to an interested outsider, it look like UOP started during the Decadal. Is that correct? If yes then does the Decadal process encourage people to combine existing proposals into something new that is than published at the same time as end report? What was the process here? Thanks for any insights.
Go look at the previous decadal survey. Concepts for Neptune orbiters and Uranus orbiters have been studied for awhile now (in fact, it would be nifty if somebody helped me compile a list...)
Keep in mind that many concepts have a lot of overlap in terms of science goals, instruments, etc. There are very few things that are entirely new.
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Sure, but then again, they're talking about an Enceladus lander before Europa which is surprising.
Read the report. The justification is there in the report.
Europa is and will remain a very high priority scientific target. But it is, and will remain, a very difficult target to reach. The radiation there is bad and makes any mission extremely difficult to design and build. And if you are only going to do it once (by "once" I mean that you get one shot and the next try will be more than a decade later), you really need to do it right.
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This decadal clocked in at over 700 pages. Last one was just under 400 pages. Muscular.
And the first draft was over 800 pages.
I wrote the introduction chapter for this one. It's short because I did not have much time.
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Sure, but then again, they're talking about an Enceladus lander before Europa which is surprising.
Read the report.
Where can I find the full report?
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Sure, but then again, they're talking about an Enceladus lander before Europa which is surprising.
Read the report.
Where can I find the full report?
Available here: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26522/origins-worlds-and-life-a-decadal-strategy-for-planetary-science
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Cause Europa is still one of the prime candidates for alien life in its subsurface ocean, its one of the best moons to study by far. Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
Do they know more about the surface of Enceladus than Europa?
The Uranus system is believed to have geologically active moons as well. Its a full system like Saturn, with rings and tons of moons. Yet, there are basic elementary things we don't know about Uranus. We're assuming its an ice giant, but don't actually know. Does it actually have a significant proportion of ices? We don't even know because we haven't measured its gross composition. Yet Uranus sized planets are like the most common ones in the galaxy.
This points to incredibly basic science about the solar system that we just don't know.
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Here's a buried link to all the mission whitepapers referenced in this survey, by the way.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2okGz5Oj1vnGZjMQ9cYNPLfDkM7TkA4
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Cause Europa is still one of the prime candidates for alien life in its subsurface ocean, its one of the best moons to study by far. Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
Do they know more about the surface of Enceladus than Europa?
Probably has to do with radiation levels. Longer lived lander and relay satellite.
Sure, but then again, they're talking about an Enceladus lander before Europa which is surprising.
Read the report. The justification is there in the report.
Europa is and will remain a very high priority scientific target. But it is, and will remain, a very difficult target to reach. The radiation there is bad and makes any mission extremely difficult to design and build. And if you are only going to do it once (by "once" I mean that you get one shot and the next try will be more than a decade later), you really need to do it right.
Interesting seeing this immediately following the decadal: Europa's similarity to Greenland hints that Jupiter moon could harbor life (https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/europas-similarity-greenland-hints-that-jupiter-moon-could-harbor-life-2022-04-19/).
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What is the next step though, when will they decide which missions go ahead? This is just a survey.
The surveys determine the the flagship mission sequence for the next decade. This one is: 1) Europa Clipper, 2) Mars Sample Return, 3) Uranus Orbiter and Probe, and 4) Enceladus Orbilander. Depending on exact annual budget levels, Uranus will start in earnest circa FY 2024. Barring calamity, that is the flagship mission order that NASA will execute. The science side of the NASA house takes its marching orders from these surveys, especially for the biggest, most expensive investments like flagship missions. There has to be relative consensus from the relevant science community on this stuff, or the plan risks getting torn apart by competing factions lobbying the White House and Congress.
Below the flagship level, there are smaller, competitive programs where NASA has a stronger hand on what missions go when. In the case of the mid-sized New Frontiers Program, the decadal survey identifies a list of candidate missions, the community sends mission proposals to NASA against those candidates, and NASA decides which mission (and thus destination) gets funding. In the case of the smallest Discovery Program, there is no list of candidate missions and the community can send in proposals for any mission concept/destination.
Cause Europa is still one of the prime candidates for alien life in its subsurface ocean, its one of the best moons to study by far.
There are no guarantees here, but Enceladus is generally viewed as more likely to harbor life than Europa. Due to organic chemicals detected in its geysers, there’s evidence that liquid water is in constant contact with rocks and minerals on Enceladus. There’s also evidence for hydrogen (separate from water) in the geysers on Enceladus, which is a potential energy source. Those are both fundamental requirements for the complex chemistry necessary to generate cellular life as we know it. Both may also exist at Europa, but we have no evidence of either at Europa yet. Europa’s water may actually be trapped between ice layers, which would make it a lot less conducive to life. We just don’t know yet.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/272993-enceladus-not-europa-could-be-the-best-place-to-search-for-extraterrestrial-life
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/the-case-for-enceladus-as-the-best-place-to-look-for-life-beyond-earth/
Do they know more about the surface of Enceladus than Europa?
Enceladus is easier to sample for life for several reasons:
1) Enceladus is sending up samples of its deep liquid water layer all the time. The geysers from its South Pole are constantly erupting. So to obtain a sample from the deep water layer on Enceladus, all a spacecraft has to do is fly through the particles those geysers leave behind or land and just let the particles wash down upon the lander. If they exist at all, Europa’s geysers are unpredictable and transitory. Unlike Enceladus, there’s no way to guarantee that a lander will be at Europa at the right time for a geyser. Thus, the first Europa lander will almost certainly be limited to sampling surface ice, not deep water.
2) An Enceladus mission can last a lot longer. Europa flies through Jupiter’s Van Allen Belts, which bombard Europa and its orbit with radiation. So the life of a Europa lander is measured in a handful or two of days. But because it won’t take a hot radiation bath, an Enceladus lander can stick around for months. Longer mission life means more time and more chances to pick samples, adequately process them, and go back for more.
3) Due to its constant geysers, Enceladus has a fairly new and smooth surface. Europa’s surface is older and more fractured. There are places you don’t want to land on either, but Europa has a lot more of them. And although landing would best ensure the science, technically an Enceladus mission only has to fly through the particles left behind by its geysers to get samples. No landing may even be needed for mission success at Enceladus.
Lastly, timing is an issue. Contrary to a certain former congressman, it makes zero sense to plan a Europa lander until the data from Europa Clipper is back, analyzed, and understood. Enceladus is ready to go now based on all the work Cassini did. (Just recalled the Cassini INSRP. Lord I’m old.)
Hope this helps.
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Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
I doubt Uranus could succeed under the New Frontiers cost cap. But I personally agree that I’d rather see an Enceladus flagship over Uranus or anything else. If Enceladus harbors compelling evidence for life, that could result in a huge boost to the planetary and science budgets, fundamentally alter the field, and have implications well beyond. At least there may be a Enceladus mission under New Frontiers.
But despite its promise, evidence for life Enceladus may be ambiguous or missing, so I also understand why the planetary community didn’t roll all the dice on Enceladus and prioritized an ice giant mission like Uranus while it could. The current understanding of ice giants is weak, and they appear to be the most common type of planet beyond our solar system. Ice giant moons are just a bonus.
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https://twitter.com/CaseyDreier/status/1516495942416953345
Really interesting discussion by co-chair Robin Canup about the role of Discovery in the #PlanetaryDecadal. Cost cap goes up by 60% to $800M, but it now includes operations costs, which makes it difficult for outer planets missions to squeeze into it (i.e. they are far away).
Canup points out that, by not counting Phase E, it made it really hard to compare individual missions *in the framework* of small, fast-return goals of Discovery.
By this way of thinking, Discovery missions just aren't that compatible with outer planets missions. And maybe that's ok! OP missions are structurally different than ones closer to home. Just because you don't count Phase E doesn't mean you're not spending the money.
In this decadal, the top two flagships are OP missions, as are half of the NF mission options. So no shortage of OP investment despite changes to Discovery.
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Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
I doubt Uranus could succeed under the New Frontiers cost cap. But I personally agree that I’d rather see an Enceladus flagship over Uranus or anything else. If Enceladus harbors compelling evidence for life, that could result in a huge boost to the planetary and science budgets, fundamentally alter the field, and have implications well beyond. At least there may be a Enceladus mission under New Frontiers.
But despite its promise, evidence for life Enceladus may be ambiguous or missing, so I also understand why the planetary community didn’t roll all the dice on Enceladus and prioritized an ice giant mission like Uranus while it could. The current understanding of ice giants is weak, and they appear to be the most common type of planet beyond our solar system. Ice giant moons are just a bonus.
What's your opinion on the Triton Surveyor mission then?
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Would rather the Uranus orbiter be a New Frontiers mission instead.
I doubt Uranus could succeed under the New Frontiers cost cap. But I personally agree that I’d rather see an Enceladus flagship over Uranus or anything else. If Enceladus harbors compelling evidence for life, that could result in a huge boost to the planetary and science budgets, fundamentally alter the field, and have implications well beyond. At least there may be a Enceladus mission under New Frontiers.
But despite its promise, evidence for life Enceladus may be ambiguous or missing, so I also understand why the planetary community didn’t roll all the dice on Enceladus and prioritized an ice giant mission like Uranus while it could. The current understanding of ice giants is weak, and they appear to be the most common type of planet beyond our solar system. Ice giant moons are just a bonus.
What's your opinion on the Triton Surveyor mission then?
To hard and way more expensive. The report mentions that technology just wasn't there for a good Neptune mission. Any Triton mission that orbits will by necessity orbit Neptune, because its larger gravity well will be needed to capture the spacecraft.
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What's your opinion on the Triton Surveyor mission then?
If you mean compared to Enceladus and Europa in terms of the search for life, Triton is a candidate but probably not the best one at this point in time. It almost certainly has a liquid water mantle, and tholins in the surface ice are strongly indicative of frozen methane and other organics. But it’s not yet clear if that liquid water layer is accessible. Modeling indicates that radioactive decay in the metal/rock core, while providing enough energy to keep the water mantle melted, does not provide enough energy to drive tectonics in the ice crust above that would allow the water to escape. This seems to be confirmed by the liquid nitrogen (not water) geysers observed by Voyager 2, which were concentrated in the area of Triton that received the most solar heating (weak as it is way out there). Like Enceladus benefitted from Cassini observations and like Europa needs Clipper’s observations before a lander, Triton really needs an orbiter in the system for an extended period to tease out the exact thickness of its crust, understand the geysers, and pin down other data before committing to an expensive lander mission.
My 2 cents is that water moons like Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Triton are all very high priority research targets in a large well-funded campaign if we find strong evidence of life at one. The one that seems to give us the best shot at that is Enceladus, so I understand why that one rose to the top in the survey over Europa and Triton.
All the above is separate from the issue of understanding ice giants. Uranus is just easier to get to for now than Neptune, so I also understand why the survey picked a Uranus mission over Neptune to get at the ice giants. It’s too bad that Triton isn’t also at Uranus so we could get a 2-for-1 deal, but such are the vagaries of planetary formation and evolution.
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I meant in terms of them recommending the Triton mission as a NF7 entry
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Did the Pluto orbiter even get a mention of which Alan Stern was talking up a few years ago.
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I meant in terms of them recommending the Triton mission as a NF7 entry
There was a Triton flyby proposal to the Discovery Program called Trident that was selected for study funding (even if it wasn’t selected for development) a while back. I think that’s proof of concept that a focused Triton mission is within the realm of possibility under the larger New Frontiers cost cap. It’s just can’t be as extensive a mission as the survey’s flagship Uranus Orbiter and Probe. It will come down to the strength of that proposal versus the strength of the competing proposals.
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I meant in terms of them recommending the Triton mission as a NF7 entry
There was a Triton flyby proposal to the Discovery Program called Trident that was selected for study funding (even if it wasn’t selected for development) a while back. I think that’s proof of concept that a focused Triton mission is within the realm of possibility under the larger New Frontiers cost cap. It’s just can’t be as extensive a mission as the survey’s flagship Uranus Orbiter and Probe. It will come down to the strength of that proposal versus the strength of the competing proposals.
Then my point still stands that a Uranus Orbiter under the NF category would've been possible if they opted for that one, and the Neptune Odyssey as the flagship one, had the timing been right for a Neptune mission
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Did the Pluto orbiter even get a mention of which Alan Stern was talking up a few years ago.
It was relegated to Appendix D, along with other proposals that were ruled out from more detailed study. They cited the very long duration of the cruise, and the need for 5 RTGs and for a SLS Block 2 launch as factors against it. They also questioned whether its goal of detecting a subsurface ocean was achievable.
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Then my point still stands that a Uranus Orbiter under the NF category would've been possible if they opted for that one, and the Neptune Odyssey as the flagship one, had the timing been right for a Neptune mission
Maybe a worthwhile Uranus mission would fit under New Frontiers. It would not have been the Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission they selected for the flagship, and it probably would not get the community what it really wants in terms of understanding the ice giants. There’s just a difference between a focused outer moon flyby or orbiter and a comprehensive outer planet system survey.
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And with respect to the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56219.0) I love to learn from the pros and Decadal insiders more about how that proposal came together. When we discussed (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33971.msg2138559#msg2138559) gas giants and Neptune, Uranus back in 2020, the UOP proposal did not exist. Right?
There have been a bunch of studies over the past decade.
This Wikipedia page has good background.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus_Orbiter_and_Probe
This 2013 blog post from Van Kane shows where things were 9 years ago;
https://www.planetary.org/articles/20130708-uranus-or-bust
Link to 2010 study:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/icegiants/documents_presentations/App%20G%2023_Uranus_Orbiter_and_Probe.pdf
Link to 2018 study:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/icegiants/mission_study/
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Then my point still stands that a Uranus Orbiter under the NF category would've been possible if they opted for that one, and the Neptune Odyssey as the flagship one, had the timing been right for a Neptune mission
Maybe a worthwhile Uranus mission would fit under New Frontiers. It would not have been the Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission they selected for the flagship, and it probably would not get the community what it really wants in terms of understanding the ice giants. There’s just a difference between a focused outer moon flyby or orbiter and a comprehensive outer planet system survey.
I know that, obviously it wouldnt have the same benefits as a full flagship. But it would've more fit a NF level mission than the one they now pushed for Triton. A Neptune flagship + Uranus NF would've given us a lot of info on ice giants. The only reason it doesn't happen is that the window for a Neptune mission with gravity assist from Jupiter is tight.
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One of the issues in the background here is that Mars Sample Return (MSR) and Dragonfly are probably the two most difficult projects ever attempted by planetary science, and both are already showing cost growth. Add to that JPL's failure to accurately estimate the costs of Europa Clipper, which means that the current cost estimate for MSR is likely similarly optimistic. NASA really needs the ability to push the next flagship into the mid-2030s in order to accommodate cost overruns on those two projects. The Uranus probe offers flexibility in launch dates even without resorting to things like SLS or solar electric propulsion. Neptune needs a Jupiter assist. The 2030 one is too close to MSR while the 2040s one is too late for this decadal.
The choice between going to Uranus and doing astrobiology at Enceladus might be more controversial. My concern with going to Enceladus is that is could be a disappointment. Perhaps the part of the ocean that feeds to plumes is sterile. Perhaps the plumes contain a mess of organic compounds which will not be definitive for life one way or another. A Uranus mission is all but guaranteed to deliver major new science on a type of planet which is common in the galaxy. If NASA keeps the costs of the Uranus mission under control, then there is an opportunity to do Enceladus later in the 2030s.
I do think it is significant that Enceladus was added to the flagship queue. An ice giants mission was added to the queue by the last decadal survey, and now it is becoming a reality.
The choice between Enceladus and Europa seems to be quite an easy one. Enceladus delivers its ocean to the spacecraft via the plumes, and it doesn't have the radiation issues that Europa has. Clipper and JUICE will revolutionize understanding of Europa and Ganymede in the early 2030s, so a Europa lander might come back in the next decadal if Europa offers a very attractive landing site.
Uranus orbiter is a sensibly priced flagship that offers high science return with low risk while providing NASA with the flexibility they need. I think it is a great choice for the next flagship.
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I know that, obviously it wouldnt have the same benefits as a full flagship. But it would've more fit a NF level mission than the one they now pushed for Triton. A Neptune flagship + Uranus NF would've given us a lot of info on ice giants. The only reason it doesn't happen is that the window for a Neptune mission with gravity assist from Jupiter is tight.
Any new mission would have given us more info, indeed the Webb telescope is very likely to be the first source of detailed information while we wait for UOP to be put together. I think Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, and even Eris all deserve orbiters of the NF or flagship levels. And yes, regarding the bad Neptune/Jupiter alignment, although alternatives including upcoming giant launches might mitigate that problem soon. Further regarding Neptune, I would have settled for something like Trident or at least a flyby with probe (although an orbiter with probe is better bang-for-the-buck).
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One of the issues in the background here is that Mars Sample Return (MSR) and Dragonfly are probably the two most difficult projects ever attempted by planetary science, and both are already showing cost growth. Add to that JPL's failure to accurately estimate the costs of Europa Clipper, which means that the current cost estimate for MSR is likely similarly optimistic. NASA really needs the ability to push the next flagship into the mid-2030s in order to accommodate cost overruns on those two projects. The Uranus probe offers flexibility in launch dates even without resorting to things like SLS or solar electric propulsion. Neptune needs a Jupiter assist. The 2030 one is too close to MSR while the 2040s one is too late for this decadal.
The more I've heard about the MSR, the more disappointed I've grown in how it's managed. With Perseverance, I can respect that a rover dedicated to choosing the best samples makes a lil sense, but needing multiple spacecraft and perpetually using the excuse of fuel loads feels like bad excuses and engineers refusing to admit they made a lame design. I just hope either humans or a more streamlined MSR can be setup; the later might be able to use the size upcoming launchers offer to its benefit on that note.
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I don't think MSR is badly managed. MSR has never been simply about sample return. It is really about life detection, and for that you need to find the right sample. A simple soil grabbing mission would have been somewhat cheaper, but it would give only a small fraction of the science.
Some of the complexity comes from trying to decouple sample collection and sample return in order to reduce risk. Once Percy drops the first set of samples onto the Martian surface, then sample return can succeed even if the rover fails. It would be simpler to gamble on the rover lasting long enough to directly deliver samples to the return mission, but that becomes risky if you need a long rover mission to collect the sample set that the scientists want.
At this point I don't see how MSR could be descoped. They are only bringing back 1kg of samples as it is. The initial samples look very promising, so I think that MSR has passed the point of no return, regardless of how much the costs grow. Clipper is a much simpler mission to deliver than MSR. If they couldn't keep that one on target, then what are the odds of delivering MSR at the current projected cost?
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I dont think the Enceladus orbilander will happen, they'll go with the Uranus mission and there will be no budget for another flagship like that in the next decade. Maybe just an orbiter, but not a lander.
A bit like that Titan Orbiter and Sea Probe mission for NF6, I could see the orbiter happening but not the lake probe.
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The briefing slides. There are 79 slides.
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Firstly, thanks for the slides Blackstar! 🙂
Secondly, a thought that crossed me was how the Saturn probe and Titan orbiter could be paired up, possibly at least. It'd make for an interesting reversal of Cassini; Saturn probe instead of orbiter and vice versa for Titan. With or without a probe riding along, I'd presume most Titan-bound craft will circle Saturn a bit not unlike how JUICE will orbit first Jupiter before Ganymede.
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Slide set attached
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Then my point still stands that a Uranus Orbiter under the NF category would've been possible if they opted for that one, and the Neptune Odyssey as the flagship one, had the timing been right for a Neptune mission
Maybe a worthwhile Uranus mission would fit under New Frontiers. It would not have been the Uranus Orbiter and Probe mission they selected for the flagship, and it probably would not get the community what it really wants in terms of understanding the ice giants. There’s just a difference between a focused outer moon flyby or orbiter and a comprehensive outer planet system survey.
Yes, for various definitions of "worthwhile."
The decadal survey starts with the science questions. "We want to answer A, B, C, D, E, and F." Answering A, B, and C may require specific instruments. Answering D may require a certain orbit. Answering E and F may require gathering data over a certain time period (like a full Martian year, or several seasons at a planet).
Then you build up a mission concept that can do those things. Then you try to adjust to make it fit a certain cost box. Maybe you eliminate an instrument, or shorten the mission duration, or accept bigger error bars for certain observations. Lots of tradeoffs.
But for many of these missions--and certainly for outer planet missions--there is a big overhead cost simply to get the spacecraft to its destination, so you really start to see economies of scale. Simply put, you pay a big amount of money for the cruise time and the communications no matter how many instruments and requirements you add on. Assuming that this costs you, say, $300 million, if you try for a cheaper mission at $1 billion, then that is 30% of your cost, whereas a $2 billion mission will provide much more science for the same $300 million overhead cost. All of this is over-simplified, but you get the idea.
So although it might be possible to do a less expensive Uranus mission by cutting back on the science, that's not a smart way to do a mission. You want to do the mission right, with a good instrument suite and answering as much science as possible. It will be decades before we mount another mission there.
Think of it like going on a trip to a faraway place: does it make sense to spend five days traveling to and from Australia and spending a day there, or spending the same travel time and spending two weeks there? Especially if you are only going to Australia once in your lifetime?
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Nobody is arguing that. What I said was, if the timing was right for a Jupiter gravity assist to Neptune, they could have gone with a Flagship Neptune orbiter mission and a NF Uranus mission during the same timeframe, studying both planets to varying degrees. That would be more feasable than the opposite, a Uranus flagship with a Neptune mission under the NF cost limit (which is what they are proposing now after adding a Triton orbiter mission to the NF selection). I think under the NF limit, a Uranus mission is more doable than a Neptune one. Hopefully I was clearer this time.
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Nobody is arguing that. What I said was, if the timing was right for a Jupiter gravity assist to Neptune, they could have gone with a Flagship Neptune orbiter mission and a NF Uranus mission during the same timeframe, studying both planets to varying degrees. That would be more feasable than the opposite, a Uranus flagship with a Neptune mission under the NF cost limit (which is what they are proposing now after adding a Triton orbiter mission to the NF selection). I think under the NF limit, a Uranus mission is more doable than a Neptune one. Hopefully I was clearer this time.
The report specifically said they do not think the technology is ready for a neptune mission
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Nobody is arguing that. What I said was, if the timing was right for a Jupiter gravity assist to Neptune, they could have gone with a Flagship Neptune orbiter mission and a NF Uranus mission during the same timeframe, studying both planets to varying degrees.
A Flagship Neptune orbiter would have to be launched by 2031 to catch up with a Jupiter gravity assist, unless you are willing to use a SLS Block 2. As we can see from the full report, even with the aspirational budget profile, a Uranus orbiter is unlikely to launch before 2031, there is no way a riskier and much expensive Neptune orbiter could make the deadline.
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What's the story behind Mars Life Explorer? I thought new Mars missions were competing in Discovery/New Frontiers. Endurance-A isn't bad, but it is directly from New Frontiers.
So Orbilander is set to be replaced in New Frontiers and Titan has to wait for 'program balance' . I just don't find twelve questions equal. Enceladus could be now.
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I dont think the Enceladus orbilander will happen, they'll go with the Uranus mission and there will be no budget for another flagship like that in the next decade. Maybe just an orbiter, but not a lander.
A bit like that Titan Orbiter and Sea Probe mission for NF6, I could see the orbiter happening but not the lake probe.
Don't forget that ESA has decided that their next large mission will be to either Enceladus or Europa. They will see the same advantages and disadvantages for each target as the Decadal Survey. And while they make their decisions independently, their managers and scientists read the Decadal Surveys, and it will inform their decision.
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[...]
So although it might be possible to do a less expensive Uranus mission by cutting back on the science, that's not a smart way to do a mission. You want to do the mission right, with a good instrument suite and answering as much science as possible. It will be decades before we mount another mission there.
How much "descoping options" was put into the decisions? If something scares me is that they decide on this mission, then the budget balloons, and they descope it. Thus, they don't answer a big percentage of the questions that made it valid in the first place. Unless SMD is willing to do an JWST-style sacrifice of everything else to keep it within its scope.
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I don't think MSR is badly managed. MSR has never been simply about sample return. It is really about life detection, and for that you need to find the right sample. A simple soil grabbing mission would have been somewhat cheaper, but it would give only a small fraction of the science.
Some of the complexity comes from trying to decouple sample collection and sample return in order to reduce risk. Once Percy drops the first set of samples onto the Martian surface, then sample return can succeed even if the rover fails. It would be simpler to gamble on the rover lasting long enough to directly deliver samples to the return mission, but that becomes risky if you need a long rover mission to collect the sample set that the scientists want.
At this point I don't see how MSR could be descoped. They are only bringing back 1kg of samples as it is. The initial samples look very promising, so I think that MSR has passed the point of no return, regardless of how much the costs grow. Clipper is a much simpler mission to deliver than MSR. If they couldn't keep that one on target, then what are the odds of delivering MSR at the current projected cost?
China said on April 23 that their MSR will be launched 2028.
There will be political pressure to make MSR happen no later than the Chinese project.
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Don't forget that ESA has decided that their next large mission will be to either Enceladus or Europa. They will see the same advantages and disadvantages for each target as the Decadal Survey. And while they make their decisions independently, their managers and scientists read the Decadal Surveys, and it will inform their decision.
That’s a good point. Like Enceladus Orbitlander, ESA and their planetary community also want an orbiter and a lander capability. It would be slick if resources could be combined, and an Enceladus mission schedule brought to the left rather than mostly likely pushed out another decade due to budget constraints.
https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-picks-categories-three-flagship-space-missions
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/1866264/3219248/ChobletG_Enceladus-ESA-Voyage-2050_final.pdf/bd402c07-fb49-5fd2-09c2-8ce8cfc4fc3b?t=1565184629813
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How much "descoping options" was put into the decisions? If something scares me is that they decide on this mission, then the budget balloons, and they descope it. Thus, they don't answer a big percentage of the questions that made it valid in the first place. Unless SMD is willing to do an JWST-style sacrifice of everything else to keep it within its scope.
NASA has responsibility for implementing the recommendations. It is up to NASA to decide how to de-scope. NASA will ask for help in determining what science questions have to be answered. There are several ways that they can do this, including their own science definition teams, or even going back to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, to seek advice on de-scoping, or establishing the science "floor" below which a mission is no longer worth doing. The decadal survey makes recommendations, but decisions like that have to be left to people who design and implement the missions.
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How much "descoping options" was put into the decisions? If something scares me is that they decide on this mission, then the budget balloons, and they descope it. Thus, they don't answer a big percentage of the questions that made it valid in the first place. Unless SMD is willing to do an JWST-style sacrifice of everything else to keep it within its scope.
NASA has responsibility for implementing the recommendations. It is up to NASA to decide how to de-scope. NASA will ask for help in determining what science questions have to be answered. There are several ways that they can do this, including their own science definition teams, or even going back to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, to seek advice on de-scoping, or establishing the science "floor" below which a mission is no longer worth doing. The decadal survey makes recommendations, but decisions like that have to be left to people who design and implement the missions.
I understand that. But there's something about flagship missions cost being seriously underestimated in the decadals in general (JWST, WFIRST and MSR come to mind). I am more of a pessimist when doing budget predictions, and would heavily weight the descoping or budget limitations sensibility for a mission to go through.
I'm wondering if the Decadal knows that the flagship will be protected, and thus takes the probably optimistic cost estimates of the PI (and may be some Aerospace Corp light overview) knowing that it will be over what they estimated. After all, history says that if they want to descope something important down the line, they can always point to the sunk costs and how that would waste a lot of money.
I see this as a very ambitious missions, full of instruments, probes and techs that go into a relatively unknown environment. And that for a Flagship means a ballooning expense on risk reduction tasks. So I see a huge cost risk if it is indeed going to give the science to (partially) answer all those questions I read on the Decadal. On the other hand, the MSR, while technically complex, has practically nothing low-TRL, all the environments are known and the only reason it's going to cost so much is because it was sized in pieces that are within the size and complexity of previous missions. I do trust that it won't go much over budget and will get the best science (fingers crossed). But ultimately it is doing a lot of reasonably limited-innovation missions to answer a single super important question.
Uranus orbiter and probe is more like pretending to throw everything and the kitchen sink to the most promising target to tick 70% of all the important questions on the Decadal. I just see this as a huge risk (at least cost risk) and feel its like playing roulette. Or may be I'm pretty conservative.
And please, understand that I'm writing this as a mere amateur, with no insight on the decision process, without any pretense to actually know what I'm talking about, and with the utmost respect to the professionals and the process. It's just that I'm trying to squeeze your insight into the workings of what I see as an organizational structure that would seem to have an optimism bias with respect to cost and I just can't quite understand why.
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Don't forget that ESA has decided that their next large mission will be to either Enceladus or Europa. They will see the same advantages and disadvantages for each target as the Decadal Survey. And while they make their decisions independently, their managers and scientists read the Decadal Surveys, and it will inform their decision.
That’s a good point. Like Enceladus Orbitlander, ESA and their planetary community also want an orbiter and a lander capability. It would be slick if resources could be combined, and an Enceladus mission schedule brought to the left rather than mostly likely pushed out another decade due to budget constraints.
https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-picks-categories-three-flagship-space-missions
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/1866264/3219248/ChobletG_Enceladus-ESA-Voyage-2050_final.pdf/bd402c07-fb49-5fd2-09c2-8ce8cfc4fc3b?t=1565184629813
ESA is currently proposing to its governments going further and that the L-class should be upgraded into a sample return mission, leveraging work on MSR. Enceladus seems the most likely target, given the lower engineering complexity required compared to other moons. It would be a strategic priority and so probably remain majority ESA-led. We may have a better idea if this will go ahead in November.
https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-s-space-agency-dreams-launching-its-own-astronauts-amid-ambitious-accelerator-plans
So the question is how would Orbilander/Enceladus Multiple Flyby fit into this? Nasa would almost certainly get involved in an ESA Enceladus sample return mission, but that alone likely wouldn't satisfy the Decadal directives. The US community is definitely going to want a NASA mission on science as high profile as ocean worlds habitability.
Enceladus Multiple Flyby may well launch before ESA's mission, conducting a first attempt at life-finding. It would get first lick, so to speak.
It isn't clear which mission, ESR or Orbilander, would get to Enceladus first. Could Orbilander include an Enceladus Ascent Vehicle to send surface samples to an ESA earth return vehicle? In that way Orbilander could also act as the landed component to an ESA orbiter.
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IMO any sample return would involve plume material gathered by an orbiter only. Nothing going down Enceladus’ gravity well will be coming back, certainly for these first missions. The lander’s science will involve self-contained instruments sending back data.
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IMO any sample return would involve plume material gathered by an orbiter only. Nothing going down Enceladus’ gravity well will be coming back, certainly for these first missions. The lander’s science will involve self-contained instruments sending back data.
The problem with that is plume material will be damaged by the net velocity of impact. This a serious complication with a mission explicitly designed for life-detection, as any fragile organic material will become unidentifiable. The best samples for life-detection will be from the surface.
Enceladus barely has a gravity well. It has just 1/30th the surface gravity of Mars for example, so in theory it should be far easier to accomplish than MSR, and the mechanisms to do this are already being designed for that mission.
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IMO any sample return would involve plume material gathered by an orbiter only. Nothing going down Enceladus’ gravity well will be coming back, certainly for these first missions. The lander’s science will involve self-contained instruments sending back data.
The problem with that is plume material will be damaged by the net velocity of impact. This a serious complication with a mission explicitly designed for life-detection, as any fragile organic material will become unidentifiable. The best samples for life detection will be from the surface.
Enceladus barely has a gravity well. It has just 1/30th the surface gravity of Mars for example, so in theory it should be far easier to accomplish than MSR, and the mechanisms to do this are already being designed for that mission.
One of the Decadal’s backup slides specifically mentions observing a velocity to preserve organic molecules:
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I dont think the Enceladus orbilander will happen, they'll go with the Uranus mission and there will be no budget for another flagship like that in the next decade. Maybe just an orbiter, but not a lander.
A bit like that Titan Orbiter and Sea Probe mission for NF6, I could see the orbiter happening but not the lake probe.
Don't forget that ESA has decided that their next large mission will be to either Enceladus or Europa. They will see the same advantages and disadvantages for each target as the Decadal Survey. And while they make their decisions independently, their managers and scientists read the Decadal Surveys, and it will inform their decision.
Don't forget that ESA has decided that their next large mission will be to either Enceladus or Europa. They will see the same advantages and disadvantages for each target as the Decadal Survey. And while they make their decisions independently, their managers and scientists read the Decadal Surveys, and it will inform their decision.
That’s a good point. Like Enceladus Orbitlander, ESA and their planetary community also want an orbiter and a lander capability. It would be slick if resources could be combined, and an Enceladus mission schedule brought to the left rather than mostly likely pushed out another decade due to budget constraints.
https://www.science.org/content/article/europe-picks-categories-three-flagship-space-missions
https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/1866264/3219248/ChobletG_Enceladus-ESA-Voyage-2050_final.pdf/bd402c07-fb49-5fd2-09c2-8ce8cfc4fc3b?t=1565184629813
Looking at the white papers for Voyage 2050, Titan might also be a target for ESA, although unlike Dragonfly, they're interested in an orbiter and a sea probe to one of their lakes. I'm hoping this is the case, cause its unlikely that NASA will go back to Titan after Dragonfly anytime soon, so ESA doing so would be great, and then NASA could be the one tackling Enceladus.
I really like this one for Titan: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/documents/1866264/3219248/RodriguezS_WP-Titan_ESA-Voyage-2050.Rodriguez.pdf/45efb390-a24d-33fc-a2a0-e6fc627a630b?t=1565184657580
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IMO any sample return would involve plume material gathered by an orbiter only. Nothing going down Enceladus’ gravity well will be coming back, certainly for these first missions. The lander’s science will involve self-contained instruments sending back data.
The problem with that is plume material will be damaged by the net velocity of impact. This a serious complication with a mission explicitly designed for life-detection, as any fragile organic material will become unidentifiable. The best samples for life-detection will be from the surface.
Enceladus barely has a gravity well. It has just 1/30th the surface gravity of Mars for example, so in theory it should be far easier to accomplish than MSR, and the mechanisms to do this are already being designed for that mission.
Enceladus escape is about 300m/s. But you still need to leave the Saturn gravity well. Saturn's escape is about 35km/s. Sun's is 42km/s, just to put that in perspective. But you already are a bit farther, so you actually "only" need about 22.38km/s. So you need 23km/s to escape Saturn from Enceladus surface. That's not what I would call a trivial amount. In fact, I think that the only way they could pretend to do it within a NF budget is by doing a flyby with an extremely elliptic orbit that dwells barely into Saturn's gravity well and has many passes close enough to Enceladus to capture some geyser's plume.
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I understand that. But there's something about flagship missions cost being seriously underestimated in the decadals in general (JWST, WFIRST and MSR come to mind).
This is the kind of subject that would require a day-long workshop to discuss and explain, and I'm not going to delve into it very deeply here. But I think the first thing to remember is that estimates are not predictions of the future. Or, at best, they are predictions based upon a certain set of assumptions, and those assumptions usually change. The changing assumptions, and the reasons for those changes, are what really deserve attention.
In general, I would caution against getting too stuck on the idea of these numbers as "estimates." People on the outside of NASA and outside the process for developing missions think that what is evaluated early on is somehow supposed to be "correct" and therefore there is something wrong when the numbers get bigger--either something is wrong with the original estimate, or something is wrong with the people managing the programs (usually voiced in the form of "Those idiots at NASA who don't know how to manage programs on schedule and to cost."). But that's not the way these figures are used or understood. Rather, they are figures used for evaluation purposes at points in time. They help the people involved assemble a bigger picture, like the goals for exploring the solar system during the next decade given an overall budget profile.
There's a lot more that could be written about that, and I don't have 20 hours. But I'll just take one example from your sentence above--WFIRST. You wrote that the decadal "seriously underestimated" WFIRST's costs. But did it? The decadal survey essentially said "Build a telescope that has X, Y, and Z capabilities, and it will probably cost about B dollars." Except NASA is building a telescope that is different than what was described in the decadal survey (look at the mirror diameter, for example). It has additional capabilities and a different implementation. And there are reasons for all of that. So how can one claim that the decadal survey "seriously underestimated" the cost when it estimated something different? Was the decadal "wrong" because the numbers are different now? Are the people who are managing the program wrong/idiots because WFIRST costs a lot more?
And that would then lead into a big, complicated discussion of what happened with WFIRST and why it happened, and also if it could have happened some other way. There was a senior leader at NASA who has said that they tried really hard to get approval for WFIRST as it was defined in the decadal survey, but they could not get any traction. It was only when the NRO mirrors showed up that the much senior leadership (like Congress) actually got interested in funding it. There may be other interpretations of what happened, but that alone demonstrates that there are people involved in these processes--like members of Congress--who don't care what the decadal survey said something should cost, they just want it built, and they will add money to it to get it built. (Go look at the history of John Culberson and the Europa mission as another example.)
I'd have to take each of these other programs apart and discuss them at length (and I don't understand what happened with most of them), but another thing I would add is that it is really hard--really really hard--to estimate how much it will cost to build something that has never been built before. And JWST is a partial example of that. I think that a lot of things went wrong with coming up with early cost estimates of JWST, but even if everything had gone right, the cost estimates still would have been wrong, because nobody ever built a giant cryogenic telescope before.
A key thing to keep in mind is that for program planning purposes, the cost estimate that everybody in the government uses is not the initial proposal (advocate's) estimate, and not a decadal survey estimate. The estimate that they use is the one developed at Key Decision Point C (C is for "confirmation"--when the program is confirmed for go-ahead). That's the number that they work from. And that is the number that people are held accountable to.
Finally, I'll add that people should not assume that NASA gets this wrong and other people and organizations get it right. Some NASA cost estimates are right on the money and programs come in at their budgets (sometimes even a little under budget). But other organizations also do bad jobs at estimating costs. And sometimes that happens even with very low-tech projects. Over 15 years ago there was a big road project near where I live. It was a badly-needed project to unsnarl a complex highway interchange. It went significantly over-budget. For a project that involved steel, concrete, and asphalt. Why? Lots of reasons. A building boom in China drove up the price of concrete. There was a bad assumption that some land (school property) could be taken from a local government to build an on-ramp and the local government would not demand payment for it. A bunch of bad assumptions, some of them honest mistakes, some of them stupid mistakes. But still, this was for roads and bridges, not cryogenic telescopes. It wasn't rocket science, and they still got it wrong.
And to that I'd also add that nobody should assume that governments are bad at this and private companies are good at it (because of the profit motive, etc.). Private companies often get it very wrong too. I met a guy who worked on a major computer chip development program for Intel in the 1990s. He told me that the project ended up costing billions more than they predicted. The company was able to hide most of the overruns, even though they were publicly traded. Or for a more relevant example, look at Virgin Galactic--what do you think they predicted their development costs would be back when they were created in the 2000s? Considering that their CEO was predicting that they would be doing revenue flights ten years ago and they're still not doing them, you can assume that ten additional years of development has cost a lot of money.
Like I wrote above, it's a big complicated subject. It would require another 50,000 words for me to explain it here. But that's just an estimate.
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I'm just curious as to the differences in the UOP spacecraft and the Odyssey spacecraft.i would have thought they would be nearly identical, and they are similar, but I'm hoping someone can shed some light on the differences.
UOP: 4.2B
Odyssey: 5.2B
Are the cost estimates in the survey inclusive of the LV? Or is the difference in price more related to the science package for each? Which are:
UOP: 9 orbiter / 3 probe
Odyssey: 14 orbiter / 7 probe
Or maybe lifespan?
UOP: 13y cruise + 3 year tour
Odyssey: 16y cruise + 4 year tour
(Obviously instrument quantity = quality = equivalent mass) but why did UOP end up with a smaller suite of instruments? Mass constrained since it is using a commercial vehicle perhaps? If the inner solar tour option is considered, the report says there is the option for additional mass. (5000kg vs. 5900kg) it's interesting that the disadvantages of the thermal environment still make the lighter-jupiter assisted design preferable.
How much would a Neptune orbiter have cost with the same reduced suite? Or another way, how much would UOP cost with the larger suite? Are some of the instruments specific to Neptune/Uranus such that they are not needed at the other?
UOP had alternate trajectories considered (inner solar system flybys). Is there a reason Neptune can't be reached by a similar route?
If UOP is implemented, what does that mean for Neptune? Is the science redundant, that a flagship is unlikely in the future? It would be cool to see Neptune get a dedicated mission perhaps when the planets are better aligned... (Wen?)
So many questions, just curious. Thanks!
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Like I wrote above, it's a big complicated subject. It would require another 50,000 words for me to explain it here. But that's just an estimate.
You are reminding me of something that I seem to have misremembered as Pauli, but was apparently Victor Weisskopf:
What is a model? A model is like an Austrian timetable. Austrian trains are always late. A Prussian visitor asks the Austrian conductor why they bother to print timetables. The conductor replies "If we did not, how would we know how late the trains are?
In: H. Frauenfelder and E.M. Henley, Subatomic Physics, Part V (p. 351), Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974.
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I'm wondering if the Decadal knows that the flagship will be protected, and thus takes the probably optimistic cost estimates of the PI (and may be some Aerospace Corp light overview) knowing that it will be over what they estimated. After all, history says that if they want to descope something important down the line, they can always point to the sunk costs and how that would waste a lot of money.
This is not what happens. The decadals do not take the cost estimates of the mission advocates. The decadal surveys have hired the Aerospace Corporation to conduct a Technical Risk and Cost Evaluation process on the mission concepts. During the 2011 planetary decadal survey, the TRACE process (then called CATE, but same thing) generally came in on average about 53% higher than the cost estimates by the mission advocates.
The decadal surveys don't use the advocates' cost estimates, period.
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On the other hand, the MSR, while technically complex, has practically nothing low-TRL, all the environments are known and the only reason it's going to cost so much is because it was sized in pieces that are within the size and complexity of previous missions. I do trust that it won't go much over budget and will get the best science (fingers crossed). But ultimately it is doing a lot of reasonably limited-innovation missions to answer a single super important question.
Uranus orbiter and probe is more like pretending to throw everything and the kitchen sink to the most promising target to tick 70% of all the important questions on the Decadal. I just see this as a huge risk (at least cost risk) and feel its like playing roulette. Or may be I'm pretty conservative.
I think you have those missions backwards. There are low-TRL technologies on Mars Sample Return: launching from Mars surface (never done before) and automated rendezvous in Mars orbit (also never done before). You could add recovery of the sample canisters and their safe encapsulation according to planetary protection standards. The bigger issue is mostly adding up a lot of complex actions that have to go exactly right--like launching from Mars and then automatically rendezvousing in orbit before coming back from Mars. MSR is not an easy mission, it's very complex.
Orbiters are easier by definition. So the Uranus Orbiter and Probe is an inherently easier mission than landing somewhere like Europa. Now people can make decisions that would jack up the cost (like picking more complex instruments), but the mission itself is not inherently difficult.
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This is not what happens. The decadals do not take the cost estimates of the mission advocates. The decadal surveys have hired the Aerospace Corporation to conduct a Technical Risk and Cost Evaluation process on the mission concepts. During the 2011 planetary decadal survey, the TRACE process (then called CATE, but same thing) generally came in on average about 53% higher than the cost estimates by the mission advocates.
The decadal surveys don't use the advocates' cost estimates, period.
Just for those who may not know, Aerospace Corporation is a non-profit, federally funded R&D center in Los Angeles that has a big, long-standing contract with the Air Force to provide independent technical, cost, and other analyses. Despite the name, Aerospace Corporation is not another for-profit corporation in the aerospace sector (not another Boeing or Lockheed Martin).
Other agencies like NASA also take advantage of Aerospace Corporation’s independence and expertise for their own analyses, like independent cost estimates (CATE, TRACE) for decadal survey decision making.
And never, ever take the cost and schedule estimates provided by the advocates for a mission or program at face value. No one ever gets it perfectly right, but independent estimates like those generated by the Aerospace Corporation, the GAO, the NASA IG, etc. are always closer to where missions and programs actually come out.
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China said on April 23 that their MSR will be launched 2028.
There will be political pressure to make MSR happen no later than the Chinese project.
I didn't realize that the US and Chinese Mars sample return missions are both launching in 2028.
https://spacenews.com/china-is-planning-a-complex-mars-sample-return-mission/
Are we in a race with the Chinese for the first Mars sample?
Here's where it gets interesting. The US sample will return in 2033. There are claims at Wikipedia and elsewhere that the Chinese are targeting September 2031 for the return of their sample. Wikipedia doesn't list a source for that. There is also a claim in this online forum which appears to have a Chinese language source.
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/t/chinas-space-program-news-thread.1143/page-1064 , Post #10638 by taxiya
"According to 火星采样返回任务轨道方案初步设计, if the launch date is 2028, the accent time from Mars surface is April 2030, departure to earth is between October and November 2030, arriving earth on September 2031.
Note, the reason that China's sample returns in 2031, two years ahead of NASA is because China gether sample on the landing site, while NASA is having a rover to run around gathering cached samples, so it will miss the return launch window in 2030."
Of course Chinese projects also get delayed, so they likely won't hit their current dates. However it does seem that we are in a race with the Chinese for the first Martian sample. I wonder what Congress will think of the possibility that the Chinese might return a sample ahead of NASA?
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I didn't realize that the US and Chinese Mars sample return missions are both launching in 2028.
https://spacenews.com/china-is-planning-a-complex-mars-sample-return-mission/
Are we in a race with the Chinese for the first Mars sample?
Here's where it gets interesting. The US sample will return in 2033. There are claims at Wikipedia and elsewhere that the Chinese are targeting September 2031 for the return of their sample. Wikipedia doesn't list a source for that. There is also a claim in this online forum which appears to have a Chinese language source.
https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/t/chinas-space-program-news-thread.1143/page-1064 , Post #10638 by taxiya
"According to 火星采样返回任务轨道方案初步设计, if the launch date is 2028, the accent time from Mars surface is April 2030, departure to earth is between October and November 2030, arriving earth on September 2031.
Note, the reason that China's sample returns in 2031, two years ahead of NASA is because China gether sample on the landing site, while NASA is having a rover to run around gathering cached samples, so it will miss the return launch window in 2030."
Of course Chinese projects also get delayed, so they likely won't hit their current dates. However it does seem that we are in a race with the Chinese for the first Martian sample. I wonder what Congress will think of the possibility that the Chinese might return a sample ahead of NASA?
One thing is to bring a sample from Mars. Another is to take years to find the best samples with the most chance to find life as we know it. I don't know enough about the Chinese sample return plans, but you have to consider if it's being done for the prestige of being the first to get a sample or to get the best possible science. From what I understand, the lander will scoop a sample, put it on the included ascent vehicle and return them with the orbiter. How are they going to make the best sample choice if they have to actually land on top? How are they going to avoid contamination from the descent rockets? How good can be a sample of a landing strip where you can sample at most m²?
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One thing is to bring a sample from Mars. Another is to take years to find the best samples with the most chance to find life as we know it. I don't know enough about the Chinese sample return plans, but you have to consider if it's being done for the prestige of being the first to get a sample or to get the best possible science. From what I understand, the lander will scoop a sample, put it on the included ascent vehicle and return them with the orbiter. How are they going to make the best sample choice if they have to actually land on top? How are they going to avoid contamination from the descent rockets? How good can be a sample of a landing strip where you can sample at most m²?
Even a little roving can be a big help. Geologists were happy (and somewhat surprised, IIRC) that Armstrong managed to collect a number of fairly different samples, all from quite near the Apollo 11 landing site. I believe these provided much more information than the contingency sample, which was "grab a sample right where you get off the ladder, so at least we have *something* if you need to leave in a hurry."
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Chinese mars sample return is 100% about prestige and nothing about science. It'll be a lander that just scoops up a bit of dirt in reach and takes off. Just like how Russia tried to beat Apollo with a sample return mission that failed.
The Chinese won't be carefully curated and understood based on the area's geology. It may not even be an interesting thing, just dirt in reach of the lander. Perseverance passes 99.99999% of rocks to find the most interesting things. It's samples will be some of the most valuable things known to man. Each sample will have had its source and location studied and understood.
For the lay person, imagine a biologist. Give them a leaf - from basically any plant somewhere on earth. How much does it tell them? Compare that to each sample coming with detailed info about each plant (tree/plant) and what other plants grew near it.
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The US mission will have a soil sample, and about 30 other samples each of which is more interesting than soil. Scientifically, I think it will be between 10 and 100 times better than the Chinese.
However, there are probably more people in the US who care about prestige than care about science. Especially people in politics. So NASA is going to have to think about this. If there is a race with the Chinese, then MSR will take up a lot of resources which could lead to other projects getting delayed.
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Just for those who may not know, Aerospace Corporation is a non-profit, federally funded R&D center in Los Angeles that has a big, long-standing contract with the Air Force to provide independent technical, cost, and other analyses. Despite the name, Aerospace Corporation is not another for-profit corporation in the aerospace sector (not another Boeing or Lockheed Martin).
Other agencies like NASA also take advantage of Aerospace Corporation’s independence and expertise for their own analyses, like independent cost estimates (CATE, TRACE) for decadal survey decision making.
And never, ever take the cost and schedule estimates provided by the advocates for a mission or program at face value. No one ever gets it perfectly right, but independent estimates like those generated by the Aerospace Corporation, the GAO, the NASA IG, etc. are always closer to where missions and programs actually come out.
That is all correct. Of course, there's a lot more that could be written about this. One of the things that Aerospace does with the TRACE process is it applies "threats" to the cost estimates. Threats include all kinds of things that can delay a program or increase its costs that are not necessarily the fault of the people working on the program itself. For example, NASA might have to shift money out of one program to pay for another program, delaying the first program and driving up its cost. Or NASA might tell a program to plan for two launch vehicles instead of simply picking one, because NASA may not yet have the other vehicle on contract. Or maybe a hurricane damages critical facilities like a clean room, and so a spacecraft cannot go into testing at the expected time. Or maybe a global pandemic shuts down a facility when a spacecraft is undergoing testing and integration. All those things can drive up costs. Aerospace has developed historical averages for threats like that which it can apply to its assessments.
But I'd like to point out that there are good people trying to do an honest job with cost evaluations. That does not mean that the process has no problems. But even if the system was perfect, it would still not be completely accurate, for some reasons that I have previously explained. It is just really difficult to make an accurate cost estimate for technology development that has never been done before. It is also difficult to make an accurate cost estimate when there are people who fund (Congress) and oversee (OMB, NASA) programs who make different decisions than were assumed in the original estimates. Going back to WFIRST example I mentioned earlier, the cost estimates for that telescope were probably pretty accurate at the time. And then somebody decided to use the NRO mirror instead, and that changed the overall assumptions and increased the cost.
Maybe I'll write more about this later.
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Chinese mars sample return is 100% about prestige and nothing about science. It'll be a lander that just scoops up a bit of dirt in reach and takes off.
My perspective is a little different on that, since bringing home samples to do the science and investigations on Earth is still valid exploration.
In general Apollo astronauts were not doing science themselves, but collecting information to be processed back on Earth. Harrison Schmitt an exception of course. But scientists are still doing science on the samples brought back from Apollo, so sample returns should qualify as science expeditions as much as they are about prestige.
My $0.02
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Chinese mars sample return is 100% about prestige and nothing about science.
If there were not a competing MSR architecture in a similar timeframe, Tianwen-x would be 100% about the science, being the only Mars sample ever returned and available for study on Earth.
A bird in the hand is worth two stuck on the surface of another planetary body.
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Chinese mars sample return is 100% about prestige and nothing about science.
If there were not a competing MSR architecture in a similar timeframe, Tianwen-x would be 100% about the science, being the only Mars sample ever returned and available for study on Earth.
A bird in the hand is worth two stuck on the surface of another planetary body.
There's a reason the NASA/ESA MSR is done the way it was done. It wanted very specifically to answer the most intriguin question: is or was there life on Mars? The way they leveraged decades of Mars exploration to pick the most prospective site to pick up samples, the time and care and the instrument sets of Perseverance to select the most interesting samples, it speaks about how it was a very science lead mission. Scooping a bit of soil and returning it is not that critical. Specially with the instruments that they can launch on a rover. Even without MSR, just scooping a bit of soil and bringing it back, would be mostly a technology/prestige driven mission.
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being the only Mars sample ever returned and available for study on Earth.
There are hundreds of Mars samples on Earth already in the form of meteorites with inarguable martian provenance.
A grab sample might be slightly better because we would know where on the planet it came from, but only slightly better.
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A grab sample might be slightly better because we would know where on the planet it came from, but only slightly better.
A sample with a known situ is very, very better than a sample from somewhere on Mars.
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It is definitely a race now.
The objective for participants of the race could be different, political (propaganda) or scientific. I would avoid to state what is better as there different priorities, context and scale for opponents, only history will show.
But for sure this is much more than just science competition.
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A sample with a known situ is very, very better than a sample from somewhere on Mars.
Depends on what you're going to do with it. The conclusion from the US Mars science community was that a grab sample wasn't worth the effort. One could have a debate about how justified that was, and I don't claim to know what the "right answer" is.
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But I'd like to point out that there are good people trying to do an honest job with cost evaluations.
No disagreement. My only point was that independent cost/schedule/flight safety/etc estimates are almost always (always in my experience) closer to where programs come out than the estimates produced by the program themselves. Part of that is due to advocate bias. Part of that is due to the experience of the independent estimators.
You’re right that a subsequent decision could be made — like flat-funding a development program annually instead of providing a normal Gaussian budget distribution over time — that blows all prior estimates for that program away. But when the program rebaselines, I’d still take the new independent estimates over the new program estimates.
I’m just dumbfounded when folks, after a program’s umpteenth overrun, hold up a new program estimate as the right number and claim that the GAO or IG or whoever is wrong, when those independent warnings about the same program have been right all along.
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A sample with a known situ is very, very better than a sample from somewhere on Mars.
Depends on what you're going to do with it. The conclusion from the US Mars science community was that a grab sample wasn't worth the effort. One could have a debate about how justified that was, and I don't claim to know what the "right answer" is.
You're trying to discredit the idea and confuse things. This isn't an opinion, and the correct answer IS known. Ask any geologist on the planet. The insitu information turns a sample from kinda nice to invaluable. This isn't internet opinion, its hard science.
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But I'd like to point out that there are good people trying to do an honest job with cost evaluations.
No disagreement. My only point was that independent cost/schedule/flight safety/etc estimates are almost always (always in my experience) closer to where programs come out than the estimates produced by the program themselves. Part of that is due to advocate bias. Part of that is due to the experience of the independent estimators.
You’re right that a subsequent decision could be made — like flat-funding a development program annually instead of providing a normal Gaussian budget distribution over time — that blows all prior estimates for that program away. But when the program rebaselines, I’d still take the new independent estimates over the new program estimates.
I’m just dumbfounded when folks, after a program’s umpteenth overrun, hold up a new program estimate as the right number and claim that the GAO or IG or whoever is wrong, when those independent warnings about the same program have been right all along.
I was not disagreeing with your comments. I was agreeing with them and trying to build upon them.
There is an interesting middle situation where advocates seek out an "independent" cost estimate that then still ends up being wildly optimistic. I have suspicions as to how this happens, but I don't have great insight about it. In an ideal world, you would expect mission advocates to take their mission to Aerospace and have them run a TRACE on it to provide a number that would be consistent with the decadal survey process. But they don't really want to do this, because they may not like the outcome. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because nobody will trust their numbers and will require an independent estimate.
A few anecdotes that support your last point:
-look at what happened when the 2011 decadal survey CATE (now TRACE) said that the Jupiter Europa Orbiter would cost $4.7 billion. JEO advocates thought that was preposterous. I did not hear public statements to that effect, but I know that the JPL people blasted it. If you look in the book "The Mission," there are comments along those lines. The decadal survey said that the mission needed to be substantially de-scoped to make it cheaper. That became Europa Clipper. Now look at the latest cost estimate for Europa Clipper.
-I remember Steve Squyres, while he was chair of the 2011 decadal survey, telling the story about how he had to put the Mars Exploration Rover program to an independent cost estimate. The numbers came back and he thought they were nuts. Not realistic. And then the program came in much closer to that number than to his internal numbers.
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But I'd like to point out that there are good people trying to do an honest job with cost evaluations.
I know and I think I've tried very hard not to state it otherwise. I'm sorry if anything else was implied. I might have taken Aerospace Corp a bit hard. But CATE is mostly a statistical method based on comparables. I'm more of a zero base budget or bottom-ups guy. I now understand that programs are rebaselined many times. But from following the JWST and OCX programs, I found a lot of very bad management decisions. NG "we only used will on all the requirements because young people don't know the different to shall and now we don't have the budget to change it" was something that broke my confidence in them kinda forever. But I've seen that NASA's leadership changed the top management of the project (on both sides of the aisle) and the program was saved. So is not that I don't trust the intentions nor the excellence of most of the people involved.
The specific thing I was trying to understand, is a thing that usually happens on big organizations. No good deed goes unpunished, and thus those that actually are under budget or don't ask for all the bells and whistles get less budget assigned in the future and their weight on the organization power is reduced. The fact that PI, specially outer planet, usually get one project in their lifetime through the final stages of the competition, does not helps in experience nor in incentives to stay under budget vs getting as much features and mission assurance as possible.
Then you mix this with the fact that you depend on the will and internal politics of both the legislative and the executive. And I get the impression that having huge contracts for a prime to find a "sponsor" at the political level (I seem to recall JWST was saved by the advocacy of a congresswoman that was from the prime headquarter's district, and Clipper was help because it was a pet project of another one.) In this environment, I would seem that having certain budgetary risk and a wide margin on the mission definition might actually be a feature for approval. Nobody is doing nothing nefarious, it's just the way politics work.
As a side note, how much did New Horizons helped the PR side to enable the Uranus Orbiter and Probe?
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How much does fickle congressional funding change the mission cost that isn't in the cost estimate?
Where congress underfunds the mission - making it take longer to build. There are fixed costs (people and facilities) per year that must be payed for more years than expected. Things like that.
Do mission estimates account for a certain level of congress jerking them around?
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How much does fickle congressional funding change the mission cost that isn't in the cost estimate?
Where congress underfunds the mission - making it take longer to build. There are fixed costs (people and facilities) per year that must be payed for more years than expected. Things like that.
Do mission estimates account for a certain level of congress jerking them around?
It's not just Congress. The Executive Branch can also provide insufficient funding for a mission development, thus extending the development and increasing the overall mission cost. That kind of thing is included in the "threats" that Aerospace applies in the TRACE process. So yes.
And when this happens, it often happens for good reasons. The people in charge are balancing multiple projects. Not everything can get funded according to an ideal budget profile. It's just not possible. As an example, some planetary missions have to hit specific launch windows, so if it experiences a problem in development, you may have to spend more than you want in order to still make that launch window. You may have to take that money out of another project that does not have that problem, underfunding it, and increasing the overall cost of that program. That's management.
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He mentions the planetary decadal survey:
https://youtu.be/MA9whGnisvA?t=105
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It has been a few weeks since the release of the planetary decadal survey, so I think enough time has passed to bring up a few things. (Note: as I've mentioned before, I was a study director for this decadal survey. I ran the Venus and Ocean Worlds panels. I also was a study director on the previous planetary decadal survey, as well as the astrophysics decadal survey, two planetary decadal midterm studies, and for my sins, I'm now in charge of another decadal survey. So I have been deeply steeped in this process.)
There has been a fair amount of media coverage of the decadal survey (see attached), but I also think there were some relatively big stories within the decadal survey that have probably had important ramifications within certain groups in the planetary science community. I don't think those stories have been covered yet, although perhaps some enterprising writer may want to take them on at some point. They are:
-Europa Lander: after a lot of attention and money (how much?) spent on this over much of the past decade, it is not prioritized in this decadal survey. Why? What does that say about Europa Lander?
-Io explorer not on the New Frontiers 6 list.
-South Pole Aitken Basin not on the New Frontiers 6 list. What does this mean for the New Frontiers 5 competition?
-There's now a lunar rover--Endurance--as a "strategic" mission tied to human lunar landings. Is that likely to happen? If it doesn't, then does South Pole Aitken Basin science get neglected?
-A bunch of related questions concerning New Frontiers 5 and 6.
Maybe I'll think of a few more, but I think that each of those topics could form the basis of an interesting article for somebody (not me) to write.
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I haven't read all of the decadal survey yet, so I don't have to much to say about it. I don't see a sustainable plan for Mars in there. If they paid any attention to rover/lander communications relay and landing site selection needs then I haven't found that section yet.
I'm not too thrilled with the New Frontiers mission list, but I'm not sure it matters. When the inevitable cost overruns are taken into account, I don't think they will do as many New Frontiers selections as they plan. There are a few very strong proposals and also several older ones which I think have little chance of being selected.
I really like the Endurance proposal for a long range lunar rover. Integrating human and robotic exploration in the way they suggest represents a significant step forward over the Apollo program. I think that Artemis needs to show that it is more advanced than Apollo, and this is a way to do that.
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I haven't read all of the decadal survey yet, so I don't have to much to say about it. I don't see a sustainable plan for Mars in there. If they paid any attention to rover/lander communications relay and landing site selection needs then I haven't found that section yet.
I'm not too thrilled with the New Frontiers mission list, but I'm not sure it matters. When the inevitable cost overruns are taken into account, I don't think they will do as many New Frontiers selections as they plan. There are a few very strong proposals and also several older ones which I think have little chance of being selected.
I really like the Endurance proposal for a long range lunar rover. Integrating human and robotic exploration in the way they suggest represents a significant step forward over the Apollo program. I think that Artemis needs to show that it is more advanced than Apollo, and this is a way to do that.
Yea, after thinking about it, it kinda feels like they just phoned in the new frontiers section.
We Martians podcast had a 2 hr interview (2 episodes) with Casey Dreier of the Planetary society about the decadal.
https://www.wemartians.com/podcasts/120-the-decadal-survey-part-1-feat-casey-dreier
https://www.wemartians.com/podcasts/121-the-decadal-survey-part-2-feat-casey-dreier
One interesting thing they briefly mentioned is how the 2 venus discovery missions are really gonna screw up discovery/new frontiers funding. With the extra instruments, launch and other stuff, each of those missions are actually over a billion dollars each. That will surely have a chilling effect on planetary budgets that hasn't really been mentioned very much too.
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Yea, after thinking about it, it kinda feels like they just phoned in the new frontiers section.
Written by somebody who wasn't there for all those endless meetings where we discussed the options...
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Yea, after thinking about it, it kinda feels like they just phoned in the new frontiers section.
Written by somebody who wasn't there for all those endless meetings where we discussed the options...
This is true. do you have some insight you can give?
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One of the problems that inflation causes is that it undermines the usefulness of money as a unit of account. With inflation at current levels we are going to have to remember that a 2025$ is not the same as a 2022$ and that both are quite different from 2011$. For some reason the decadal uses FY25 dollars. We are going to have to be careful to adjust for inflation before comparing costs.
On the New Frontiers topic, I am disappointed by this:
"Recommendation: Mission themes for the NF-6 and NF-7 calls should continue to be specified by the decadal survey." (22-24)
I think it is a shame that they didn't open up New Frontiers for outer solar system missions. The reason we got Dragonfly is because NASA was forced to add an 'Ocean worlds' theme to New Frontiers which allowed some design freedom to propose innovative new ideas. The decadal has decided to lock things down again and return to a narrowly specified list of missions. This will stop novel ideas like Dragonfly from being proposed in future New Frontiers competitions.
The current Discovery program allows for novel proposals in the inner solar system, but most outer solar system concepts require a New Frontiers budget.
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There's another issue with the New Frontiers mission list. I think the lunar stuff should have been taken out of it. The South Pole Aitken Basin and the Lunar Geophysical Network have been passed over a number of times and at this point it seems unlikely that either is going to win the New Frontiers competition. Also, it doesn't make sense to spend scarce New Frontiers money on missions which might be partly addressed by Artemis or Commercial Lunar Payload Services(CLPS).
The South Pole Aitken Basin and Lunar Geophysical Network concepts should be moved over to the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP) which can then try to forge a rational lunar scientific program which is coordinated with Artemis.
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I think it is a shame that they didn't open up New Frontiers for outer solar system missions. The reason we got Dragonfly is because NASA was forced to add an 'Ocean worlds' theme to New Frontiers which allowed some design freedom to propose innovative new ideas. The decadal has decided to lock things down again and return to a narrowly specified list of missions. This will stop novel ideas like Dragonfly from being proposed in future New Frontiers competitions.
The current Discovery program allows for novel proposals in the inner solar system, but most outer solar system concepts require a New Frontiers budget.
The NF 6 & 7 mission lists are:
• Comet Surface Sample Return (CSSR)
• Enceladus multiple flyby (EMF)
• Lunar Geophysical Network (LGN)
• Saturn Probe
• Venus In Situ Explorer (VISE)
• Centaur Orbiter and Lander (CORAL)
• Ceres sample return
• Titan orbiter
Several of those are outer solar system missions.
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I should have phrased that better. What I meant was that it is a shame that people don't have the freedom to propose a mission to any outer solar system target. That was proposed but the decadal recommended against it.
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Ocean Worlds wasn't to any target, just Titan or Enceladus. And frankly I think that poorly-defined theme was a mistake as we've now got an unfocused mission that will do some science, but not clearly move the needle in any particularl discipline, particularly the Ocean part of 'Ocean Worlds'...
Yes Dragonfly is a novel and interesting mission in terms of engineering, but science wise it seems to be skirting around the big issues.
Would have been better if the Ocean Worlds mission were more constrained to a particular priority scientific objective.
Anyway, with two outer solar system flagships with Ocean Worlds-related science being chosen, and a number of NF outer solar system candidates, the community has plenty enough to get on with.
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My opinion is that the NF-6 mission list has five strong missions and three that have little chance of selection. I don't think that a Venus lander has any chance of being picked until the data from Veritas and Davinci come back. It should have been removed from the list.
Also, New Frontiers has really outgrown the Saturn atmosphere probe mission. Now that it is possible to use solar power at Saturn, and considering the growth in the Discovery budget, it might be possible to do that in the Discovery program.
Lunar missions need to be coordinated with Artemis and CLPS, and New Frontiers is not set up to do that. I don't think the Lunar Geophysical Network should be on there.
That leaves 5 strong contenders. Comet Sample Return will probably be the strongest. I was impressed with how much they were able to work out from the Hayabusa-2 samples of Ryugu about the ancient hydrothermal system that created those samples in the early days of the solar system. (See LPSC 2022 abstracts for details: https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2022/pdf/lpsc2022_program.htm) We have never sampled the icy materials out of which comets are built, and they might contain clues to the process of planetary formation. Space scientists have wanted such samples for decades. The CESAR proposal nearly won the last New Frontiers competition, and I expect there will be an improved version in future competitions.
The Enceladus and Ceres missions have a strong astrobiological appeal. The Titan mission would be very complementary to Dragonfly. And Centaurs shows signs of being acitve worlds with ring systems, which should make them fascinating to study.
The NF-6 mission list should just have included those five missions.
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Now that it is possible to use solar power at Saturn
Huh?? Since when?
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Now that it is possible to use solar power at Saturn
Huh?? Since when?
You can use Solar power practically anywhere if you use reflectors to bounce light onto your arrays - IIRC Boeing has used reflectors on some ComSats. You can certainly use them out to Jupiter (and in a nasty charged particle environment so they are probably not as efficient as they might otherwise be - Saturn wouldn't demand such durability).
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Now that it is possible to use solar power at Saturn
Huh?? Since when?
Several Discovery and New Frontiers missions have been proposed that would use solar power at Saturn. The just completed Decadal Survey included evaluation of a solar-powered Titan orbiter. The Enceladus multiple flyby mission concept study also evaluated solar power, concluded that an RTG was more mass efficient, but the report did not mention that a solar powered mission was infeasible.
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You can use Solar power practically anywhere if you use reflectors to bounce light onto your arrays - IIRC Boeing has used reflectors on some ComSats. You can certainly use them out to Jupiter (and in a nasty charged particle environment so they are probably not as efficient as they might otherwise be - Saturn wouldn't demand such durability).
Reflectors are not used on Juno nor Europa Clipper.
The reason they can work at Jupiter and possibly Saturn is both a combination of high performance solar cells and careful energy management. Europa Clipper will use a similar method as Juno, operating the instruments for a short period of time and using solar cells for the rest of a long orbit. Once a spacecraft gets past Saturn, there's really not enough sunlight to make them work (although technically, you could equip a spacecraft with massive solar arrays, but the mass penalty gets really high and the technology is not practical). Also, if the mission requires more observations, then a big elliptical orbit may not work either, and may drive the design toward using RTGs.
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Now that it is possible to use solar power at Saturn
Huh?? Since when?
Several Discovery and New Frontiers missions have been proposed that would use solar power at Saturn. The just completed Decadal Survey included evaluation of a solar-powered Titan orbiter. The Enceladus multiple flyby mission concept study also evaluated solar power, concluded that an RTG was more mass efficient, but the report did not mention that a solar powered mission was infeasible.
Sounds logical; the limit to solar power basically your time in direct sun and how much light can be concentrated. You reach a point where the mass is better spent going nuclear. Saturn feels like a stretch, but for a shortlived probe or simple orbiter doable.
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Sounds logical; the limit to solar power basically your time in direct sun and how much light can be concentrated. You reach a point where the mass is better spent going nuclear. Saturn feels like a stretch, but for a shortlived probe or simple orbiter doable.
You reach a point where the solar arrays are so big that you cannot manage them in flight (like turning the spacecraft).
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At Saturn they are planning to use a MegaFlex solar array with high-efficiency LILT-screen collar cells on the Titan mission.
Here is some background on solar array technology, including low intensity low temperature use.
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/feb2018/presentations/Surampud-2.pdf
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There are several New Frontiers themes involving Saturn. They don't mention the possibility of combining multiple mission themes into a single spacecraft. They don't say if they would be willing to accept a mission that addresses multiple themes but does not do all the science desired for each theme.
Having looked at some of the concept studies I think there is a chance this might work. If it did, it would be extremely good value for money.
The Titan orbiter is designed to carry a 239.5 kg probe. The probe needed to study Saturn's atmosphere would probably be almost identical to the atmosphere probe needed at Uranus. That probe weighs 224 kg according to the 2018 Uranus Neptune mission study.
The Titan orbiter also has a very capable mass spectrometer which is much more advanced than Cassini's. Surely that would produce exciting new results if it flew through an Enceladus plume! The Titan orbiter plans a two year Saturn tour, but they don't say what science than plan to do in that time. One feature of the Enceladus multiple flyby mission is that they need slower speed flybys than Cassini in order to avoid damaging the organic molecules. I don't know if the orbital mechanics would work out for the Titan orbiter to do useful science in the Enceladus plumes, but it would be really cool if they did.
One reason that a combined mission might not work would be that it wouldn't fit inside a New Frontiers cost cap. Probably the cheapest way to do a Saturn atmosphere probe would be to build two copies of the Uranus probe and send the second one to Saturn. The science is almost identical and the atmospheres are quite similar. NASA has not done an atmosphere probe since Galileo, so there isn't much heritage to build on. Most of the cost of the probe would be for design, engineering and testing. The incremental (marginal) cost of building a second set of hardware for Saturn might be quite low. However, trying to coordinate a Flagship with a New Frontiers project would be tricky.
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There are several New Frontiers themes involving Saturn. They don't mention the possibility of combining multiple mission themes into a single spacecraft. They don't say if they would be willing to accept a mission that addresses multiple themes but does not do all the science desired for each theme.
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The Titan orbiter also has a very capable mass spectrometer which is much more advanced than Cassini's. Surely that would produce exciting new results if it flew through an Enceladus plume! The Titan orbiter plans a two year Saturn tour, but they don't say what science than plan to do in that time. One feature of the Enceladus multiple flyby mission is that they need slower speed flybys than Cassini in order to avoid damaging the organic molecules. I don't know if the orbital mechanics would work out for the Titan orbiter to do useful science in the Enceladus plumes, but it would be really cool if they did.
One reason that a combined mission might not work would be that it wouldn't fit inside a New Frontiers cost cap. Probably the cheapest way to do a Saturn atmosphere probe would be to build two copies of the Uranus probe and send the second one to Saturn. The science is almost identical and the atmospheres are quite similar. NASA has not done an atmosphere probe since Galileo, so there isn't much heritage to build on. Most of the cost of the probe would be for design, engineering and testing. The incremental (marginal) cost of building a second set of hardware for Saturn might be quite low. However, trying to coordinate a Flagship with a New Frontiers project would be tricky.
Couple of thoughts on your comments. If the goal is to fly the science of the several NF missions, combining them into a flagship is probably much more cost effective. However, it's likely that for the next decade (or two) only one will be selected. Adding additional requirements to its capabilities (as you point out) probably would grow the cost out of the NF budget.
Original proposal PI for the NF Titan orbiter concept recognized the possibility of flying through the Enceladus plumes (I chatted with him on email). He didn't advertise the possibility because in the first round of the competition, the mission needs to have very focused goals (although all the reviewers of the proposal would have known about the possibility; the PI had previsously proposed a Discovery Saturn orbiter that would have done just that).
BTW, if one instrument could be added to one of the NF concepts, for me it would be an IR camera on the Enceladus multiple flyby concept to map the surface of Titan at higher resolution during the Titan flybys to set up the Enceladus flybys (and dedicated Titan mapping flybys could be added in an extended mission). An obvious concept, although I think the Enceladus proposing team would take any additional instrument capacity (mass, volume, power) and add another instrument for measuring plume composition instead.
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I like the idea of adding an IR camera to the Enceladus multiple flyby concept. That concept already has a narrow angle camera for plume imaging, so you might replace that with the IR camera.
The mass spectrometer will produce a lot of very technical data and the end result might be an inconclusive mess of organic compounds. The IR camera is certain to produce images of the surface of Titan which will have a lot of public appeal.
The IR camera has a 40 cm aperture so it is significantly bigger, heavier and more expensive than the existing camera, which I believe is a 20 cm aperture unit based on LORRI from New Horizons. There has been a lot of progress in IR detectors since Cassini was built so that camera would have the potential to make discoveries throughout the Saturn system.
One issue to think about is how strict NASA will be with the cost cap. They certainly let Dragonfly exceed it by quite a lot. The other issue is how important the search for life is relative to the other science questions. If it decided that it is far more important than the other questions that could favor the Enceladus mission ond the Ceres sample return.
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One issue to think about is how strict NASA will be with the cost cap. They certainly let Dragonfly exceed it by quite a lot. The other issue is how important the search for life is relative to the other science questions. If it decided that it is far more important than the other questions that could favor the Enceladus mission ond the Ceres sample return.
It's not clear to me that NASA 'let' Dragonfly exceed it's cost caps. NASA did impose a series of delays to handle NASA's expenditure flow issues, which raised costs to NASA. However, I've not heard of any new features added to Dragonfly since it's selection.
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It's not clear to me that NASA 'let' Dragonfly exceed it's cost caps. NASA did impose a series of delays to handle NASA's expenditure flow issues, which raised costs to NASA. However, I've not heard of any new features added to Dragonfly since it's selection.
We had some people on the DS investigate the costs for Dragonfly and the answer they came back with was "it's due to everything." It's really complicated. I wish I had taken notes during that discussion so I could remember. Part of the explanation is inflation in aerospace--this was last year, before the current inflation. Part of the explanation was that the previous cost cap assumed 2015 dollars and we were now in 2021. But then there were a lot of other things as well. The pandemic was one, although I don't think that it was a major driver. There were just a lot of things driving that and it's not simple. (I have some of my own suspicions, but I don't have evidence, so I will keep them to myself.)
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It's not clear to me that NASA 'let' Dragonfly exceed it's cost caps. NASA did impose a series of delays to handle NASA's expenditure flow issues, which raised costs to NASA. However, I've not heard of any new features added to Dragonfly since it's selection.
We had some people on the DS investigate the costs for Dragonfly and the answer they came back with was "it's due to everything." It's really complicated. I wish I had taken notes during that discussion so I could remember. Part of the explanation is inflation in aerospace--this was last year, before the current inflation. Part of the explanation was that the previous cost cap assumed 2015 dollars and we were now in 2021. But then there were a lot of other things as well. The pandemic was one, although I don't think that it was a major driver. There were just a lot of things driving that and it's not simple. (I have some of my own suspicions, but I don't have evidence, so I will keep them to myself.)
Another factor is that under the rules of this selection, NASA picks up the mission operations costs. As the mission schedule is moved out, those not insubstantial operations costs are now being paid for with more inflated dollars.
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It's not clear to me that NASA 'let' Dragonfly exceed it's cost caps. NASA did impose a series of delays to handle NASA's expenditure flow issues, which raised costs to NASA. However, I've not heard of any new features added to Dragonfly since it's selection.
We had some people on the DS investigate the costs for Dragonfly and the answer they came back with was "it's due to everything." It's really complicated. I wish I had taken notes during that discussion so I could remember. Part of the explanation is inflation in aerospace--this was last year, before the current inflation. Part of the explanation was that the previous cost cap assumed 2015 dollars and we were now in 2021. But then there were a lot of other things as well. The pandemic was one, although I don't think that it was a major driver. There were just a lot of things driving that and it's not simple. (I have some of my own suspicions, but I don't have evidence, so I will keep them to myself.)
Another factor is that under the rules of this selection, NASA picks up the mission operations costs. As the mission schedule is moved out, those not insubstantial operations costs are now being paid for with more inflated dollars.
That could be true. I will see if I can ask the person who dug into the subject for us. We had a lot of smart people who have worked on multiple missions over the years who were confused about the costs. So if even the experts are confused about it, there's no easy/simple answer. I think this is a case where we can't just sum it up as "overruns" that are the program's fault, it's a lot of other things.
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It has been a few weeks since the release of the planetary decadal survey, so I think enough time has passed to bring up a few things. (Note: as I've mentioned before, I was a study director for this decadal survey. I ran the Venus and Ocean Worlds panels. I also was a study director on the previous planetary decadal survey, as well as the astrophysics decadal survey, two planetary decadal midterm studies, and for my sins, I'm now in charge of another decadal survey. So I have been deeply steeped in this process.)
There has been a fair amount of media coverage of the decadal survey (see attached), but I also think there were some relatively big stories within the decadal survey that have probably had important ramifications within certain groups in the planetary science community. I don't think those stories have been covered yet, although perhaps some enterprising writer may want to take them on at some point. They are:
-Europa Lander: after a lot of attention and money (how much?) spent on this over much of the past decade, it is not prioritized in this decadal survey. Why? What does that say about Europa Lander?
I never thought that rushing to a Europa lander prior to the results of Clipper made any sense except to Culberson. I do think that the work done, especially on the instruments was a useful, although the total cost of all the mission studies added to the actual money spent on instrument development was probably pretty substantial. Too many other things to do to go and dig out old budgets (and I’m not sure how well the expenses were identified).
Another strike against the Europa lander, of course, is it’s cost. Without going back and looking at the Survey’s appendix, I seem to recall that it was estimated to be over $5B. So, Enceladus is an – at least – as compelling of a target at lower cost, we know relatively little about Europa compared to Enceladus, and cost, I’d been amazed if the Decadal committee had prioritized it.
-Io explorer not on the New Frontiers 6 list.
I can think of several explanations. IVO would do great science, but does the science line up as well with the priority questions as other potential NF missions? The results of the Decadal suggest not. In addition, IVO was judged in the last Discovery competition to be excellent* in both science and implementation concept as a Discovery mission. The NF program is explicitly for concepts that can’t be implemented within the Discovery program. However, the new rules for accounting for mission operations may or may not leave IVO feasible in the next Discovery competition; I have no insight on this. (*There have been several statements that all four of the last Discovery finalists received excellent ratings, which speaks to the robustness of the Discovery program.)
-South Pole Aitken Basin not on the New Frontiers 6 list. What does this mean for the New Frontiers 5 competition?
The text of the new Decadal, I recall, stated that no single landing location within the South Pole Aitken Basin (SPA) could return samples addressing all the priority questions. This was the reason for the Decadal proposing the Endurance rover (see Blackstar’s next question). That would seem to be a serious blow against a proposal for the previous single site concept in the next competition.
-There's now a lunar rover--Endurance--as a "strategic" mission tied to human lunar landings. Is that likely to happen? If it doesn't, then does South Pole Aitken Basin science get neglected?
That might be another way of asking if human landings are going to happen, which I view not as a technical question but one of political will and the funding levels that do or do not follow from that. The concept seems clever – send out a long-distance rover to collect around a dozen samples along a very long drive (longer than I expect a space agency would allow humans to traverse; robot breaks down hundreds of km’s from recovery, too bad; human rover breaks down hundreds of km’s from rescue…).
The concept does allow for the alternative possibility that a robotic craft could return the samples. I could image that the sample tubes or canister holding them could be designed to be returned either by a human mission or a later robotic craft.
On a mostly unrelated note, I remember reading a paper or a presentation on the gating factor for multi-hundreds of km Mars rovers. It's the lubricants for the wheels. Apparently it takes a lot of power to heat up the lubricant prior to driving. I remember that there are efforts to develop low temperature lubricants (which if operating at ambient temps, would have to work over a good range).
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Europa Lander: One trouble with Europa is that there is no obvious way to get to the ocean. We don't even know how thick the ice shell is. One estimate is 1 km, another is 30 km. Either way it is too thick to drill. We need one place where the waters come to within less than 10 m of the surface. Maybe no such place exists. There is some evidence of plumes of erupting water, but little is known about them. If water is erupting from the surface, then maybe the salts and organics are left behind in some sort of evaporite deposit. I think there are possibilities for Europa, but we don't know enough about the surface to put together a really exciting lander. Europa Clipper will change all that.
Another issue for Europa is competition with other astrobiology destinations. Enough is known about the Enceladus plumes to plan a mission there. Ceres offers the chance to do a sample return from the deposits in Occator Crater. Europa hasn't been well enough mapped and will always have radiation issues.
Lunar: There are several programs that can potentially do science on the moon. Artemis could collect samples and leave behind seismic instruments, as Apollo did. New Frontiers could potentially select a lunar mission. Then there is the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and the Lunar exploration program. There is a need to try to coordinate all this. This is complicated by program uncertainty. Will the CLPS landers work? Will the human landing system for Artemis work? What is an engineering demonstration project like CLPS doing in the science budget anyway? Can CLPS be terminated and the money used for something else?
The Endurance-A rover has a lot of promise as a partner for manned exploration, but it needs to be designed so that the sample containers could be removed by a robot arm and returned by an unmanned system if necessary. The experience of SLS and Europa Clipper shows the importance of having a backup plan. If astronauts do show up at the moon, they could replace the sample containers, do a little light maintenance, and send the rover off on another traverse. There was a very productive partnership between the manned program and the Hubble telescope, and Endurance-A offers the potential for a similar collaboration at the moon.
Endurance-A offers a huge step forward in rover range, promising a 2000 km traverse. That sort of range would be very attractive in a future Mars rover. In the long run, circumnavigations of the moon and Mars might become possible, offering sample collection opportunities at hundreds of sites. To cope with the cold, radioisotope heater units (RHUs) could be embedded in the wheel motors to keep the lubricants liquid. Both the lunar polar craters and the Martian poles have a lot of interesting science. Samples from these areas would have to be collected by robot, and then handed off to either a manned or unmanned return mission in a warm location.
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I wonder how big an impact the high levels of inflation that are now starting to appear in the global economies will have on these proposed missions. Especially as it looks likely that these levels of inflation will be maintained for an extended period. If the UK is anything to go by there seems a high likelihood of many economies going into recession as well
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Europa Lander: One trouble with Europa is that there is no obvious way to get to the ocean. We don't even know how thick the ice shell is. One estimate is 1 km, another is 30 km. Either way it is too thick to drill. We need one place where the waters come to within less than 10 m of the surface. Maybe no such place exists. There is some evidence of plumes of erupting water, but little is known about them. If water is erupting from the surface, then maybe the salts and organics are left behind in some sort of evaporite deposit. I think there are possibilities for Europa, but we don't know enough about the surface to put together a really exciting lander. Europa Clipper will change all that.
I admit that I'm kinda glad the Europa Lander is getting dropped. I'm uncomfortable with a flagship class mission that will only last a couple months before radiation eats it. Its a huge amount of resources that could be used on a mission to last many years instead.
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Lunar: There are several programs that can potentially do science on the moon. Artemis could collect samples and leave behind seismic instruments, as Apollo did. New Frontiers could potentially select a lunar mission. Then there is the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and the Lunar exploration program. There is a need to try to coordinate all this. This is complicated by program uncertainty. Will the CLPS landers work? Will the human landing system for Artemis work? What is an engineering demonstration project like CLPS doing in the science budget anyway? Can CLPS be terminated and the money used for something else?
CLPS is a dilemma, and it was a dilemma for the lunar community participants in the decadal survey. There is science that the community wants to do on the Moon. But CLPS, as currently conceived, is not really going to enable that. If you asked that community straight up what do they want in terms of lunar landers, they would ask for bigger (more payload) and longer lifetimes. If you ask them what they can do with the capabilities that are being developed as part of CLPS, you won't get an enthusiastic response from them. It's as if you need to herd cattle on a ranch and somebody gives you a miniature horse to ride.
As to why it is in the science budget, there's a certain logic to that. NASA SMD builds spacecraft. They build lots of spacecraft. They know how to design, develop, and operate them. They have a proven track record with program management that the rest of NASA lacks. So it makes sense that if somebody wants to develop robotic spacecraft, it be managed out of SMD.
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CLPS is a dilemma, and it was a dilemma for the lunar community participants in the decadal survey. There is science that the community wants to do on the Moon. But CLPS, as currently conceived, is not really going to enable that. If you asked that community straight up what do they want in terms of lunar landers, they would ask for bigger (more payload) and longer lifetimes. If you ask them what they can do with the capabilities that are being developed as part of CLPS, you won't get an enthusiastic response from them. It's as if you need to herd cattle on a ranch and somebody gives you a miniature horse to ride.
As to why it is in the science budget, there's a certain logic to that. NASA SMD builds spacecraft. They build lots of spacecraft. They know how to design, develop, and operate them. They have a proven track record with program management that the rest of NASA lacks. So it makes sense that if somebody wants to develop robotic spacecraft, it be managed out of SMD.
What do you mean by "longer lifetime" for a lunar lander? I would expect lander lifetime to be binary - you need the lander to last until it delivers the payload and don't care after that. Do landers continue to act after delivering the payload, e.g. relaying communications for a rover?
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What do you mean by "longer lifetime" for a lunar lander? I would expect lander lifetime to be binary - you need the lander to last until it delivers the payload and don't care after that. Do landers continue to act after delivering the payload, e.g. relaying communications for a rover?
Landers also are often integrated science platforms. The InSight lander, for example, had a landing function that ended at the moment of touchdown, but the science platform integrated into the same spacecraft has had a much longer life.
Sometimes a lander is distinct from the science platform, such as the VIPER rover and its lander, and sometimes it is an integrated lander/science platform.
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What do you mean by "longer lifetime" for a lunar lander? I would expect lander lifetime to be binary - you need the lander to last until it delivers the payload and don't care after that. Do landers continue to act after delivering the payload, e.g. relaying communications for a rover?
CLPS will provide power for any payloads for perhaps 10 days. Lunar day is 14 days, but of course you cannot land soon after dawn because the shadows will be bad, and low sun angles also make it hard to provide power. Science missions need longer periods of time on the surface. They also need more payload mass.
CLPS was not designed for science goals.
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I don't think CLPS makes scientific, commercial or industrial sense. I suppose it must make political sense to somebody, but I don't know that story.
It is structured in a very different way from the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. The construction of the space station created demand for a cargo transport service which was initially filled by the Space Shuttle. The retirement of the Shuttle created a market opportunity. The type of cargo to be transported was well defined. The market was large enough for an initial contract of 20 missions split between two competing contractors.
The US hasn't landed on the moon in decades, so there is no established market for transport to the lunar surface. The potential market seems to be very small, certainly less than the 20 missions in the initial CRS contract. It probably isn't big enough to support two competitors. It makes no sense to develop 4 different lander designs for this small market. CLPS has never really defined what type of cargo is going to be transported.
The CRS contractors were given 8-12 flight contracts, which gave them a chance to overcome initial failures. SpaceX is now very successful, but their first rocket failed on its first three flights. It seems very unlikely that any of the CLPS contractors will get the opportunity to fail like that. With only single flight contracts, the first failure will probably put them out of business. That is not a recipe for encouraging innovation or risk taking.
Both of the CRS contractors had a track record of developing a challenging aerospace project. Orbital Sciences had their Pegasus rocket, while SpaceX had their Falcon 1. The CLPS contractors have no similar achievements.
CLPS is a very different program from CRS, and I do not think it will enjoy the same level of success. Putting 'commercial' in the program name does not automatically reduce cost.
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It is structured in a very different way from the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program. The construction of the space station created demand for a cargo transport service which was initially filled by the Space Shuttle.
There was more to it than that. There was also the potential for non-government demand for the launch vehicle. There's no non-government demand for a lunar lander.
But to stay on topic, the dilemma for the science community is that they know the lunar science missions that they want to fly. They include things like a network of seismic sensors. To do that seismic science, they need a vehicle that will last beyond a single lunar day. I don't know what the requirement is, but I would guess it is for at least a year of seismic data from 3+ different sites on the lunar surface. The CLPS landers cannot last beyond a lunar day, and at least the early vehicles cannot be adapted to last longer.
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CLPS is a very different program from CRS
CLPS is more like COTS (COTS round 1 mainly): paying to build out a commercial capability, so that that capability exists for use in the future. Specifically, CLPS means there is a bunch of different teams all with the knowledge and experience of soft-landing a vehicle on a planetary body. Those teams can then be engaged to design vehicles to soft-land on planetary bodies, even if the first landers they ever designed are were undersized for the future applications.
It's not an unreasonable bet that a team who have successfully landed a small vehicle on the Moon that lasts a few days would in the future be able to successfully design and land a larger vehicle to last a much longer time. But making that same bet on a team who have never built any planetary lander but need to succeed with a large high capability vehicle on their first attempt is probably not going to pass any budget committee. Making that small initial bet on the CLPS teams means that future commercial capability is available if you need it.
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There's no non-government demand for a lunar lander.
Certainly some if not all of the CLPS participants claim there is such demand and are soliciting non-gov payloads for their CLPS missions or at least their vehicles -- e.g., https://masten.aero/2023-lunar-mission/ https://www.astrobotic.com/plan-your-mission/
Maybe that isn't really a market -- I'm somewhat skeptical -- but that's what they say.
For sure CLPS is not the science capability that would be desired by the community, but there may be some science to be done within its constraints anyway.
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CLPS is a very different program from CRS
CLPS is more like COTS (COTS round 1 mainly): paying to build out a commercial capability, so that that capability exists for use in the future.
I think CLIPS is more like Artimis. A program in search of uses. Its primary goal is economic stimulation, and uses for it are after the fact.
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But to stay on topic, the dilemma for the science community is that they know the lunar science missions that they want to fly. They include things like a network of seismic sensors. To do that seismic science, they need a vehicle that will last beyond a single lunar day. I don't know what the requirement is, but I would guess it is for at least a year of seismic data from 3+ different sites on the lunar surface. The CLPS landers cannot last beyond a lunar day, and at least the early vehicles cannot be adapted to last longer.
Why does power et.c have to be part of the lander vehicle? Why can't that be the payload's responsibility?
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Why does power et.c have to be part of the lander vehicle? Why can't that be the payload's responsibility?
Design choice: one integrated lander/payload craft or two independent craft.
Think InSight (integrated) and Perseverance (independent descent system and independent rover)
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There's no non-government demand for a lunar lander.
Certainly some if not all of the CLPS participants claim there is such demand and are soliciting non-gov payloads for their CLPS missions or at least their vehicles -- e.g., https://masten.aero/2023-lunar-mission/ https://www.astrobotic.com/plan-your-mission/
Maybe that isn't really a market -- I'm somewhat skeptical -- but that's what they say.
I've been to the LEAG meetings. That is indeed what they say. But then they get totally cagey about it. Won't disclose anything. The only acknowledged non-government market that I've heard of is sending ashes of dead people to the Moon.
But we've also seen this kind of thing play out before: startups claim that there are other customers, they just cannot tell you about them. Then over time they indicate that they haven't really found the other customers and if the government wants the service, the government is going to have to pay most of the cost. You can go back decades and find similar examples. (And it's not just true for space too. It happens in other areas where the government is left holding the bag at the end.)
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Why does power et.c have to be part of the lander vehicle? Why can't that be the payload's responsibility?
Design choice: one integrated lander/payload craft or two independent craft.
Think InSight (integrated) and Perseverance (independent descent system and independent rover)
Plus, we don't live in a magical world where this stuff just happens. Somebody has to pay for it. And right now we're talking about all government money anyways, so if the power system is on the lander or on the payload, the government is still paying for it, in addition to the lander.
The complaint from the science side is that NASA is paying for these landers, but the landers don't have the capabilities that the science side (which the government is also paying for) needs. Set aside power for a moment and think about payload to the surface. If the science requirement is for a 50 kg seismic payload and the lander can only carry 25 kg, then the lander is useless for that mission. Similarly, if the seismic payload also requires a power system and has to bring that along with it, that adds to the mass--which the lander also cannot accommodate.
So it goes to a fundamental question of why the government is paying for a capability that the government cannot actually use.
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The complaint from the science side is that NASA is paying for these landers, but the landers don't have the capabilities that the science side (which the government is also paying for) needs.
I haven't heard the scientists who are working on competed and selected CLPS payloads complaining.
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Why does power et.c have to be part of the lander vehicle? Why can't that be the payload's responsibility?
Design choice: one integrated lander/payload craft or two independent craft.
Think InSight (integrated) and Perseverance (independent descent system and independent rover)
Plus, we don't live in a magical world where this stuff just happens. Somebody has to pay for it. And right now we're talking about all government money anyways, so if the power system is on the lander or on the payload, the government is still paying for it, in addition to the lander.
The complaint from the science side is that NASA is paying for these landers, but the landers don't have the capabilities that the science side (which the government is also paying for) needs. Set aside power for a moment and think about payload to the surface. If the science requirement is for a 50 kg seismic payload and the lander can only carry 25 kg, then the lander is useless for that mission. Similarly, if the seismic payload also requires a power system and has to bring that along with it, that adds to the mass--which the lander also cannot accommodate.
So it goes to a fundamental question of why the government is paying for a capability that the government cannot actually use.
And the answer isn't a good one either
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The complaint from the science side is that NASA is paying for these landers, but the landers don't have the capabilities that the science side (which the government is also paying for) needs.
I haven't heard the scientists who are working on competed and selected CLPS payloads complaining.
I actually have. But they also know not to bite the hand that feeds them. But the biggest problem is not that the landers can do no science, it's that they can do science of limited value. They cannot serve the highest priority science goals of the lunar science community. Maybe they could eventually, but eventually can be a long time.
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The complaint from the science side is that NASA is paying for these landers, but the landers don't have the capabilities that the science side (which the government is also paying for) needs.
I haven't heard the scientists who are working on competed and selected CLPS payloads complaining.
I actually have. But they also know not to bite the hand that feeds them. But the biggest problem is not that the landers can do no science, it's that they can do science of limited value. They cannot serve the highest priority science goals of the lunar science community. Maybe they could eventually, but eventually can be a long time.
Is that because of limited payload alone? Because if you have enough downmass you can always slap an RHG an enough batteries to get the payload you need. Or you are only supposed to supply the instruments and the CLPS to supply power/heat/comm/landing?
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Is that because of limited payload alone? Because if you have enough downmass you can always slap an RHG an enough batteries to get the payload you need. Or you are only supposed to supply the instruments and the CLPS to supply power/heat/comm/landing?
I stated it earlier: limited payload capability, short lifetimes (about one lunar day).
All that can be solved with money. NASA could throw more money at the program for bigger landers that can also survive the lunar night. They just aren't doing that now. One can ask how long that will take, and if CLPS is the proper way to develop that capability or if there is a more direct path to doing it (like hiring an experienced contractor).
But we'll just have to wait and see. If the first two crater on the surface, the program might get reevaluated.
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Is that because of limited payload alone? Because if you have enough downmass you can always slap an RHG an enough batteries to get the payload you need. Or you are only supposed to supply the instruments and the CLPS to supply power/heat/comm/landing?
I stated it earlier: limited payload capability, short lifetimes (about one lunar day).
All that can be solved with money. NASA could throw more money at the program for bigger landers that can also survive the lunar night. They just aren't doing that now. One can ask how long that will take, and if CLPS is the proper way to develop that capability or if there is a more direct path to doing it (like hiring an experienced contractor).
But we'll just have to wait and see. If the first two crater on the surface, the program might get reevaluated.
In November 2019, NASA added five companies to the CLPS eligible vendors list.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/18/20971307/nasa-clps-program-spacex-blue-origin-sierra-nevada-ceres-tyvak-viper-rover
Presumably, a contractor with a payload to land is free to subcontract to SpaceX.
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It’s not half, and it won’t be a going market for some time to come. But there’s a significant number of non-NASA payloads in CLPS. 9 out of 24 payloads on Astrobotic’s first lander aren’t from NASA, for example.
Not all research is aiming for a Nobel Prize and not all space science is decadal-level science. For a healthy, balanced field, there should be low-cost opportunities to try out new instruments and for new PIs and PMs to gain experience without tanking a flagship. CLPS is a surface planetary science version of the Suborbital and Explorers Programs.
It’s also important to maintain a healthy, competitive industry. None of the CLPS providers will soon challenge LockMart’s planetary lander monopoly. But you have to start somewhere, and it would be good to have an alternative or two down the line.
To be clear, CLPS was part of the recommended program in the latest planetary decadal survey, and the committee wants NASA to explore extending the model:
Recommendation: NASA should continue to support commercial innovation in lunar exploration. Following demonstrated success in reaching the lunar surface, NASA should develop a plan to maximize science return from CLPS by, for example, allowing investigators to propose instrument suites coupled to specific landing sites. NASA should evaluate the future prospects for commercial delivery systems within other mission programs and consider extending approaches and lessons learned from CLPS to other destinations, e.g., Mars and asteroids.
Page 22-13 at:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032
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To be clear, CLPS was part of the recommended program in the latest planetary decadal survey, and the committee wants NASA to explore extending the model:
Recommendation: NASA should continue to support commercial innovation in lunar exploration. Following demonstrated success in reaching the lunar surface, NASA should develop a plan to maximize science return from CLPS by, for example, allowing investigators to propose instrument suites coupled to specific landing sites. NASA should evaluate the future prospects for commercial delivery systems within other mission programs and consider extending approaches and lessons learned from CLPS to other destinations, e.g., Mars and asteroids.
Page 22-13 at:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032
And that "develop a plan to maximize science return" includes what I wrote earlier about increasing the payload and lifetime. That would maximize the science return.
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To be clear, CLPS was part of the recommended program in the latest planetary decadal survey, and the committee wants NASA to explore extending the model:
Recommendation: NASA should continue to support commercial innovation in lunar exploration. Following demonstrated success in reaching the lunar surface, NASA should develop a plan to maximize science return from CLPS by, for example, allowing investigators to propose instrument suites coupled to specific landing sites. NASA should evaluate the future prospects for commercial delivery systems within other mission programs and consider extending approaches and lessons learned from CLPS to other destinations, e.g., Mars and asteroids.
Page 22-13 at:
https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/planetary-science-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-2023-2032
And that "develop a plan to maximize science return" includes what I wrote earlier about increasing the payload and lifetime. That would maximize the science return.
Astrobotics Griffin is designed to land 600kg on the surface. The lander itself won't last, but you can with that mass make a long lasting seismometer on the Moon. Now, how long it will take to Astrobotic (if they ever achieve it), is another quesiton.
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I'm not clear on what Congress expects from the CLPS money. If they just want science than there are better ways to do things. One possibility is that CLPS is intended to be a training program as edzieba says in this quote:
Specifically, CLPS means there is a bunch of different teams all with the knowledge and experience of soft-landing a vehicle on a planetary body. Those teams can then be engaged to design vehicles to soft-land on planetary bodies, even if the first landers they ever designed are were undersized for the future applications.
I think what we really need is teams that can design return missions to planetary bodies. Teams that can make a human lander work. Most science missions are one way. However, there is the South Pole Aitken Basin sample return mission on the approved list for New Frontiers. Building that would be a good way for an aspiring human lander builder to gain experience and prove their capability to NASA and the Congress. What the scientists are after is small pebbles in the lunar soil. All the lander has to do is sieve soil until it collects 1kg worth of pebbles, and then shoot the pebbles back to Earth.
Building a mission like that would be a good way for Blue Origin or Astrobotic/Masten/Firefly/Intuitive Machines to gain experience and prove their abilities to NASA and the Congress. Aerospace Corp could do an updated cost estimate for a generic mission and then we would see if the new space companies could beat it.
One way to evolve CLPS would be to turn it into a stepping stone for companies and engineers who aspire to build human rated landers by giving them a chance to build a round trip mission to the moon. The South Pole Aitken Basin mission shows a way to combine that with decadal level science.
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Another possibility is that Congress wants to sustain/subsidize a small lunar lander capability, as VSECOTSPE says:
It’s also important to maintain a healthy, competitive industry. None of the CLPS providers will soon challenge LockMart’s planetary lander monopoly. But you have to start somewhere, and it would be good to have an alternative or two down the line.
I think the best way to combine this with decadal level science is to build a lunar geophysical network. If you launched one geophysical station per year, then you could sustain your small lander industry. This would be an open ended program that would eventually build up a really capable geophysical network on the moon before moving on to do the same thing on Mars. For this to work the geophysical stations would have to last 5 to 10 years. The reason for launching only one per year would be to give the lander builder an opportunity to improve and upgrade their lander in between flights.
If the goal is a multi-purpose lander then it would be better not to integrate the science payload into it. The lander's job would be to deliver a standardized pallet with a standard size and weight to the moon. It would deploy that onto the surface and then shut down and stay very quiet so as not to interfere with the seismometer. The instrument would have it's own power and communications system.
Over time the lander's payload could be upgraded so it could also carry a small rover. To support a manned mission the lander would deliver the standard pallet but with different payloads. Perhaps a series of supply dumps could be placed by landers to support a traverse by a manned rover with a pressurized cabin.
The place to start would be designing and testing the geophysical package to the point where you were confident that you could commit to a size and weight that the landers would have to deliver. Then build the lander to meet that requirement. Unfortunately the landers have already been designed, so maybe the science mission will have to be descoped to fit the lander.
One problem that needs to be faced is that planetary landers are a tiny market. In 30 years the US has built 8, all of which have gone to Mars. JPL and Lockheed Martin would probably benefit from the opportunity to build some small lunar landers to train engineers and to try out ideas that you wouldn't want to try on a $2 billion Mars landing. There is barely enough business to keep two teams competent.
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But we'll just have to wait and see. If the first two crater on the surface, the program might get reevaluated.
I think that is probably what will happen.
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It’s not half, and it won’t be a going market for some time to come. But there’s a significant number of non-NASA payloads in CLPS. 9 out of 24 payloads on Astrobotic’s first lander aren’t from NASA, for example.
Not all research is aiming for a Nobel Prize and not all space science is decadal-level science. For a healthy, balanced field, there should be low-cost opportunities to try out new instruments and for new PIs and PMs to gain experience without tanking a flagship. CLPS is a surface planetary science version of the Suborbital and Explorers Programs.
Yeah, like this experiment - https://www.lsu.edu/research/news/2021/0504-tiger-eye-1.php - focused on radiation shielding, something my former colleagues from Czechia are participating in too - with their pixel radiation detector.
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I'm not clear on what Congress expects from the CLPS money. If they just want science than there are better ways to do things. One possibility is that CLPS is intended to be a training program...
Another possibility is that Congress wants to sustain/subsidize a small lunar lander capability...
Congress had nothing to do with CLPS. The program came from Zurbuchen, the SMD AA:
CLPS, modeled after the commercial cargo and crew programs that pay SpaceX and others to fly to the International Space Station, is Zurbuchen’s brainchild. It pays firms to carry low-cost scientific instruments at fixed prices on their lunar landers, while keeping NASA oversight at a minimum. He proposed the program in 2017, in a canny bid to add to NASA’s science budget while accommodating the incoming Trump administration, which was eager to return astronauts to the Moon.
https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-funded-startups-will-soon-put-fleet-landers-moon
In addition to being a heliophysics researcher, Zurbuchen ran a entrepreneurial program at U. Michigan. With that background, it’s not surprising that he’d take an interest in this program model and experiment with it in his directorate. (I like to think that a Facebook communication that I had with Z on this topic when he was announced as the next AA was the actual genesis, but I doubt that.)
As Tip O’Neill’s famous quote about all politics being local warns, Congress is a parochial institution, especially when it comes to spending. Advancing national interests like PI/PM competence or industry competitiveness is not their priority. State, district, and other local interests are their priority. They prefer earmarks, sole-sourced, directed, and other pork barrel spending that they can steer to their constituents. Congress is historically hostile or indifferent to competition of the kind CLPS represents. I think Congress has overlooked CLPS so far because it’s small, but the larger competitive programs that CLPS is modeled upon have faced an uphill battle to garner congressional support and funding.
Substantive issues to date with CLPS have little to do with the landers or their procurements. Rather, NASA doesn’t have its arms around the instrument and landing site selection process, which has led to food fight complaints in the community:
But there are no guarantees this new model will work. Some scientists complain that the process for choosing instruments and landing sites is opaque, without a traditional peer review from outside scientists. “We want more information on how these sites are selected,” says Amy Fagan, a planetary scientist at Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, and chair of the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, which advises NASA. She and others also worry the program lacks a long-term plan for its science campaign. “What is the big picture goal?” she asks.
This is a pretty straightforward fix — instead of running things ad hoc, LDEP needs to develop and publish a transparent plan and selection process for CLPS payloads going forward, including appropriate levels of community input and peer review.
One way to evolve CLPS would be to turn it into a stepping stone for companies and engineers who aspire to build human rated landers by giving them a chance to build a round trip mission to the moon.
Some (maybe just one, Masten) of these companies aspire to that. But manned landers are taxis to lunar orbit. They don’t bring crews back to Earth the way a sample return mission does. A scaled-up, human-rated CLPS lander doesn’t also need to take on the Earth EDL segment.
In fact, what the decadal survey recommends for lunar sample return is that LDEP leverage the Artemis crew landers already planned or in work to raise the size of the sample from ~1kg to ~100kg. The collection would still be robotic, but there’s no need for an ERV and launcher if the robotic rovers can hand off samples to crews and their landers. (Of course, Orion has little or no accommodation for returning science samples, but that’s a separate, Artemis-wide problem.)
Going forward, there are other emergent spacecraft buses and companies, like Rocket Lab’s Photon, that could be leveraged for NEA and orbital Mars work.
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House hearing on the decadal on Thursday:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/events/house-sst-sbcmt-hrg-on-planetary-sciences-and-astrobiology-decadal-survey-may-26-2022-virtual-1000-am-et/
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I went through the Decadal Survey's appendix listing estimated costs and made the attached table.
It looks like full life cycle costs for the costed New Frontier's-class missions are just under $2B to around $2.5B. The two recommended Flagship missions, Uranus orbiter and probe and the Enceladus Orbilander, are between $4B and $4.5B.
These are best estimates of point concept designs. An actual approved mission would have different design choices and it's costs would be evaluated independently.
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CLPS is very unlike the typical NASA science way of doing things. I've always assumed that when NASA got the budget increase to do lunar science, that funding these lunar lander start-ups was part of the deal, and that that was something imposed from above.
There are concept studies presented at conferences and previous decadals that could have been used as a guide for sizing the landers and their capabilities. Designing the science and instruments first, and then going to the contractors with a specification for size, weight and landing site was the only sensible way to do things. However, spending on instruments would mean spending less on the lander companies.
"And they would be cheap, with the government paying less than $100 million, when a NASA-built lander might cost $500 million, or likely more."
https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-funded-startups-will-soon-put-fleet-landers-moon
That claim is wrong. Insight cost about $800 million, and landing on Mars is a lot more difficult that landing on the moon. Much of that cost was due to delays in the instrument development. The concept study for the lunar geophysical network had four landers with instruments for about $904 million 2015 dollars, or $226 million each. (including launch and payloads)
There should be a plan for failure and a plan for success. Four consecutive failures should be the end of the program. Then NASA will have to buy a lander for the VIPER rover from a traditional contractor which will mean a big delay. The CLPS funding could go to build the Endurance-A rover.
If one of the start-ups gets 2 out of 3 successful landings then maybe they have a clue. Then they get more work. Maybe geophysics stations. If NASA thinks they have the next SpaceX they could give them a shot at a sample return mission to really grow their capability.
https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/leag2021/pdf/5039.pdf
"CLPS and LGN: NASA has now selected multiple Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) landers to deliver science instruments to the Moon beginning in 2021, and continues to solicit new instruments annually. CLPS landers can currently carry ~35kg of total payload (LGN nominal payload mass is ~76kg) and survive for one lunar day (LGN requires a minimum of 6 years which is equivalent to ~76 full lunations); "
Cost for 4 landers, excluding payloads and launch vehicle, including reserves = 624 million 2015$ = 156 million per lander. 23kg payload. Includes $54 million for operations. (Lunar Geophysical Network concept study, Page 34)
https://ia800504.us.archive.org/23/items/LunarGeophysicalNetworklgn/05_Lunar_Geophysical_Network.pdf
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I went through the Decadal Survey's appendix listing estimated costs and made the attached table.
It looks like full life cycle costs for the costed New Frontier's-class missions are just under $2B to around $2.5B. The two recommended Flagship missions, Uranus orbiter and probe and the Enceladus Orbilander, are between $4B and $4.5B.
These are best estimates of point concept designs. An actual approved mission would have different design choices and it's costs would be evaluated independently.
It's really important to keep all that in mind. I think that in some ways the word "estimates" is a bit too strong, because they are really ballpark figures, they're the starting point in the discussion, not something that is definitive or in any way "correct."
What inevitably happens is that as a mission gets approved and progresses, some people will go back to the decadal survey--or even worse, the mission advocate's proposal--and use that as the starting number and then claim that the cost overran, or grew, from that early number. Often people will do this for ideological/political purposes, to demonstrate that NASA is bad at this stuff and all NASA programs overrun their budgets. (You can see the best example of that with JWST, where some people will claim that the original estimate was $500 million and the final cost is 20 times that. JWST overran its budget, but $500 million was not the original estimated cost for JWST.)
But these early numbers are primarily intended to indicate the cost box that the mission will likely fall in: will it be a Discovery class mission, a New Frontiers class mission, or a flagship class mission? That gives decision makers a sense of how many of these things they can afford in their 10-year budget planning. In addition, these numbers can also show some trends. The obvious takeaway here is that New Frontiers class missions have grown in cost. As I noted earlier, there are a lot of complicated reasons for that (it's not a simple explanation like "inflation"), but simply understanding that it has happened allows decision makers (NASA, OMB, Congress) to understand the trend lines.
Now there's a different but related conversation about what should be considered the starting cost of a mission. That's the number developed at Key Decision Point C (C for "confirmation"). That's the number that the decision makers use when determining if a mission has "overrun" its budget and by how much. But there's a lot more to say about that, and I won't bore you with it here.
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These are best estimates of point concept designs. An actual approved mission would have different design choices and it's costs would be evaluated independently.
I'll add another comment (because I was going to sit outside but the pollen is killing me, so back in front of the computer I go...). If you look at the Mercury Lander, that was a tough one. It came in a lot higher than we expected. I forget all the reasons, but of course the thermal environment is really tough and that drives up the cost. (I seem to remember that there were other non-thermal cost drivers too, but I cannot figure out what they were.) The problem was that the TRACE process made that mission too expensive for New Frontiers no matter what you do with it. There's no good way to cut back the cost and stuff it into the NF box again. So it's really a small flagship class mission. Except that the science isn't really broad enough to be a flagship. Flagship class science has to check a lot of boxes. My point is that the Mercury Lander sorta falls into a programmatic gap. That doesn't mean it is not worth doing, but it is harder to justify that mission for its cost because of the way that the programs are conceived.
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I went through the Decadal Survey's appendix listing estimated costs and made the attached table.
It looks like full life cycle costs for the costed New Frontier's-class missions are just under $2B to around $2.5B. The two recommended Flagship missions, Uranus orbiter and probe and the Enceladus Orbilander, are between $4B and $4.5B.
These are best estimates of point concept designs. An actual approved mission would have different design choices and it's costs would be evaluated independently.
It's really important to keep all that in mind. I think that in some ways the word "estimates" is a bit too strong, because they are really ballpark figures, they're the starting point in the discussion, not something that is definitive or in any way "correct."
I think most is not political, but more of bad information that's no longer relevant. NASA (and Aerospace Corp, and the Decadal Surveys) have been working on the problem of budget overruns for at least three decades. Anybody who bothers to read the AIG reports knows that specially with the 2015/7 changes where they changed the expected budget from 50% to 70% of confidence, plus the iterative work on Aerospace Corp to do independent estimations things have improved a lot.
Regrettably the pandemic was a black swan that made everybody look bad for the statistics. But in general lessons like the JWST fiasco (and I'm talking mismanagement like eliminating the "shall" word from specifications and such) have left very strong lessons. But the good news is that those lessons where learned.
The big problem is that the pandemic has hidden most of those improvements in the short term, and we won't see the results of the long term for the next five to ten on the NF and Flagships.
I do concede the point that anything before Phase B is certainly a rule of thumb estimation (a very sophisticated thumb, but still based off kinda analogues). In this sense, it would be interesting if the outreach of missions clearly stated the estimates just before Phase C as the baseline, so when journalist and wikipedians (which, regrettably, is usually the source for journalists) get that as the initial estimate. That would be a much more realistic number, if I'm not mistaking the Phases.
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I think most is not political, but more of bad information that's no longer relevant. NASA (and Aerospace Corp, and the Decadal Surveys) have been working on the problem of budget overruns for at least three decades. Anybody who bothers to read the AIG reports knows that specially with the 2015/7 changes where they changed the expected budget from 50% to 70% of confidence, plus the iterative work on Aerospace Corp to do independent estimations things have improved a lot.
I think that's a separate issue--the issue of why do cost overruns happen after KDP-C. My point is that anything before KDP-C is not the same thing. It's not costing a piece of defined hardware. The thing that is approved at KDP-C is what they have decided to build, and it may be quite a bit different than what was proposed. A good example is WFIRST--what was proposed and what is being built are different things.
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I think most is not political, but more of bad information that's no longer relevant. NASA (and Aerospace Corp, and the Decadal Surveys) have been working on the problem of budget overruns for at least three decades. Anybody who bothers to read the AIG reports knows that specially with the 2015/7 changes where they changed the expected budget from 50% to 70% of confidence, plus the iterative work on Aerospace Corp to do independent estimations things have improved a lot.
I think that's a separate issue--the issue of why do cost overruns happen after KDP-C. My point is that anything before KDP-C is not the same thing. It's not costing a piece of defined hardware. The thing that is approved at KDP-C is what they have decided to build, and it may be quite a bit different than what was proposed. A good example is WFIRST--what was proposed and what is being built are different things.
I'm sorry my memory might have confused what I meant. When I said the estimate right before Phase-C, I mean KDP-C. I had remembered that name. But that's when SSR/SDR/PDR is done and the work towards CDR has defined most of the subsystems. So yes, we are talking about the fact that before KDP-C you can't do a good estimate since you have not defined what you are going to need/build.
My thesis is that NASA's outreach should make a general communication point that only KDP-C should be referred as the initial estimate. Anything prior is not the final mission but mostly different proposals before the final tradeoffs.
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My thesis is that NASA's outreach should make a general communication point that only KDP-C should be referred as the initial estimate. Anything prior is not the final mission but mostly different proposals before the final tradeoffs.
I have heard Paul Hertz, NASA's head of the Astrophysics Science Division, say that no matter how many times he emphasized that point, nobody listened. I think it's a battle that they cannot win.
That said, I'm not sure that it matters all that much. The people who control the money know the real numbers. The people who distort the numbers don't really matter. (And as an aside, the people who distort the numbers also don't really care about the facts. I've seen that directly. A number of years ago we had a blogger who kept reporting an inaccurate budget number. My boss contacted him to tell him the real number and why the number he was using was the wrong number. The guy didn't care and just used it as an opportunity to repeat the wrong number.)
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I think most is not political, but more of bad information that's no longer relevant. NASA (and Aerospace Corp, and the Decadal Surveys) have been working on the problem of budget overruns for at least three decades. Anybody who bothers to read the AIG reports knows that specially with the 2015/7 changes where they changed the expected budget from 50% to 70% of confidence, plus the iterative work on Aerospace Corp to do independent estimations things have improved a lot.
SNIP
The big problem is that the pandemic has hidden most of those improvements in the short term, and we won't see the results of the long term for the next five to ten on the NF and Flagships.
I wanted to come back to this (because I'm avoiding dealing with the pile of paperwork on my desk). I'm not a budget expert. But on this subject there are a bunch of different issues that I think need to be separated out, and I just wanted to mention them.
One issue is the cost estimation process. Keep in mind that there is the cost estimation that goes on for the decadal survey. And then there is the cost estimation that NASA does when a program is moving from KDP-B to KDP-C. That early cost estimation, like what Aerospace does for the TRACE process used by the decadal survey (and they use a similar process when they are hired by a mission proposer) is relatively low fidelity. One reason is that it's done really early. If you do a cost estimation in 2021, you assume a certain inflation rate. When you do cost estimation 6 years later when you are at KDP-C, you know the actual inflation rate that has occurred. (Of course, you don't necessarily know what it will be in future years, but you are still much closer to actually buying materials and paying for labor than you were in 2021.) Another big reason why the early process is lower fidelity is because you haven't gotten into the details of designing the spacecraft. More details provides greater data for estimating stuff.
Now as you noted above, there have been efforts to improve the estimation process, and that applies both for the early TRACE process and later when NASA does it for KDP-C. They've applied better tools and assumptions. That should have improved the overall estimations. (There's an important caveat to that which I may get to later.)
The second important issue is cost control. Management. Think about it: if somebody predicts that something will cost $1 billion, and then it ends up costing $2 billion, who is at fault? Was the estimate wrong? Was it based on bad assumptions? Or did the people managing the program do a bad job and allow money to be wasted? Or were there factors entirely out of everybody's control, like a hurricane that damages the testing facility and delays testing, driving up the costs?
NASA is always looking at ways to improve its management of programs to prevent their costs from getting out of control. They have lots of different tools they can apply, such as holding budget reserves at different levels in the program (meaning that somebody has to go get permission from higher up to spend that reserve money), holding more reviews/audits to find out how much is being spent (but hopefully not too many reviews, which get in the way of people doing their work), and other things to keep a tab on costs. But sometimes things are not totally within their control. I talked to the program manager of MAVEN once and asked how come he came in under budget. He replied that he would love to take credit for it, but the reality was that the contractor had another project come up, and so once they finished working on MAVEN, they pulled their people off of MAVEN to work on that other project, and that reduced the salary charges to MAVEN. It's a reminder that you cannot really look at a single program that overruns, you have to look at the larger portfolio of projects.
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It's all very well talking about KDP-C, but the cost estimate that matters is the one that sells the project. That isn't KDP-C, it is the number that is presented to the decadal survey or the New Frontiers or Discovery competition. I can't recall any occasion when a project was canceled because the KDP-C cost estimate came out too high. NASA seems to decide to commit to projects on the basis of the TRACE estimates.
In the last New Frontiers competition, NASA could have said that they didn't trust the TRACE estimate for Dragonfly and that they would move forward with both CAESAR and Dragonfly until both projects reached KDP-C. Then they would select one on the basis of the KDP-C estimate and the loser would go back into the next New Frontiers competition. Doing the design work to get both projects to KDP-C would have been expensive, but it is the only way to get a reliable estimate for a project unlike anything previously attempted.
You wouldn't do that for Psyche, Lucy, Trident, Veritas or Neocam because they are similar enough to past projects for the TRACE estimate to be reliable. I'm not sure I would say the same for Davinci, although that one might not be too hard to descope if costs start going the wrong direction.
If NASA planned to cancel some projects at KDP-C based on costs, then people would pay much more attention to the KDP-C estimate. The current expectation is that projects will be built if they win the approval of the decadal survey or win a New Frontiers or Discovery competition. The Decadal survey could also advise that a project not go ahead if the KDP-C cost came in above a certain level in 2020$.
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It's all very well talking about KDP-C, but the cost estimate that matters is the one that sells the project. That isn't KDP-C, it is the number that is presented to the decadal survey or the New Frontiers or Discovery competition. I can't recall any occasion when a project was canceled because the KDP-C cost estimate came out too high. NASA seems to decide to commit to projects on the basis of the TRACE estimates.
In the last New Frontiers competition, NASA could have said that they didn't trust the TRACE estimate for Dragonfly and that they would move forward with both CAESAR and Dragonfly until both projects reached KDP-C. Then they would select one on the basis of the KDP-C estimate and the loser would go back into the next New Frontiers competition. Doing the design work to get both projects to KDP-C would have been expensive, but it is the only way to get a reliable estimate for a project unlike anything previously attempted.
You wouldn't do that for Psyche, Lucy, Trident, Veritas or Neocam because they are similar enough to past projects for the TRACE estimate to be reliable. I'm not sure I would say the same for Davinci, although that one might not be too hard to descope if costs start going the wrong direction.
If NASA planned to cancel some projects at KDP-C based on costs, then people would pay much more attention to the KDP-C estimate. The current expectation is that projects will be built if they win the approval of the decadal survey or win a New Frontiers or Discovery competition. The Decadal survey could also advise that a project not go ahead if the KDP-C cost came in above a certain level in 2020$.
There's a lot that is wrong in what you wrote above. We didn't do a TRACE estimate for Dragonfly or for Psyche, Lucy, Trident and so on. There's a lot of other misconceptions in the above.
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If you look at the Mercury Lander, that was a tough one. It came in a lot higher than we expected. I forget all the reasons, but of course the thermal environment is really tough and that drives up the cost. (I seem to remember that there were other non-thermal cost drivers too, but I cannot figure out what they were.)
Revisiting this. I looked it up. The things contributing to the higher cost estimate were thermal management, limited communications (meaning a high degree of autonomy required), and margins. It's a tough mission for a lander.
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Has anybody heard anything about supply chain problems delaying spacecraft production or causing higher costs? The US car industry is still not back to 2019 production levels as a result of some components, especially semiconductors, just not showing up.
https://www.economist.com/business/2022/01/29/why-supply-chain-problems-arent-going-away
I am wondering if this could play a role in the cost increases seen in Europa Clipper and Dragonfly, which is now up to 2.0 to 2.5 billion $ in the 2023 budget.
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Has anybody heard anything about supply chain problems delaying spacecraft production or causing higher costs?
Yes, I have heard that this is a problem. I think it has been a problem with regard to X-59, so it's not only space.
Also, there have been labor costs as well. I'll throw out a general one: suppose that NASA is assembling a spacecraft at Goddard Space Flight Center and the pandemic hits. Some people who are assembling that spacecraft cannot be sent to work from home. So they continue work, attaching instruments to the spacecraft, testing the electronics, and so on. And then one of them tests positive for covid. So NASA halts all work on that spacecraft and sends everybody home for a few days, and brings in people to disinfect all the equipment. They're still paying the salaries of all those people at home, who are not actually working on the spacecraft. Then they give the all-clear and everybody comes back into work, except for Worker X, who is out sick with covid for two weeks. And it turns out that Worker X is the only person who can calibrate the Interocitor. Eventually Worker X returns healthy, and they all get back to work. But that was two weeks lost in the schedule, and a two-week labor charge to the program while no work got done.
This has hit different projects differently. The most expensive time to stop work is when a project is in its late stage. But stopping work in an early stage can also result in hits to the budget as well.
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It's all very well talking about KDP-C, but the cost estimate that matters is the one that sells the project. That isn't KDP-C, it is the number that is presented to the decadal survey or the New Frontiers or Discovery competition. I can't recall any occasion when a project was canceled because the KDP-C cost estimate came out too high. NASA seems to decide to commit to projects on the basis of the TRACE estimates.
TRACE or other decadal estimates have nothing to do with it. The problem is the disconnect between the earlier decision at OMB and Congress to start funding a mission or project and the later NASA KDP-C decision to proceed with development of that mission or project. KDP-C is the decision to start development, i.e, to start building the thing in earnest. But years and years of design work, technology work, and testing are necessary to get to and support a KDP-C decision. And that all costs millions or billions for a new start that has to come thru OMB and Congress. And that means the budget, policy, and/or political decisions to commit to a mission or project come long before NASA the agency ostensibly commits to the same mission or project under KDP-C.
Human nature being what it is, there are lots of NASA leaders, managers, and contractors who game this system, i.e., camel’s nose under the tent. Or who just don’t manage their requirements and workforce and let costs get out of control. But even if they were all angels, things can still legitimately come up in design and testing that dramatically alter the cost of a project or mission.
There are ways to realign and fix this system to minimize the gaming and laziness that often lead to large cost growth before KDP-C, but they would require wholesale changes in cost estimating, budget processes, and the engineering culture at NASA and elsewhere (mainly DOD).
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Thera are some simple non-nefarious reasons for that: first you have to do a lot of preliminary planning and design to even know which will be your main cost drivers. Then, you have to negotiate with your Directorate, and they will have to negotiate with the OMB and the two chambers to get support. So your actual mission might add or lose instruments, descope features, change methods or mission profile. Science, engineering and the people who signs the checks will be doing a lot of back a forth and the final design might change radically, sometimes because of technological failures or breakthroughs and sometimes because of political/economic realities.
In other words, the initial cost estimates are just reference numbers for a reference mission design. The final mission is not defined after PDR and well into CDR.
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Thera are some simple non-nefarious reasons for that
Like I wrote:
But even if they [PIs, PMs, AAs, etc.] were all angels, things can still legitimately come up in design and testing that dramatically alter the cost of a project or mission.
The final mission is not defined after PDR and well into CDR.
Both of which are after, or well after, OMB and Congress have to approve funding for the project. It’s a Catch-22. These missions are not defined at the time their budgets are approved. But they’d never get to PDR or CDR without that funding.
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The US car industry is still not back to 2019 production levels as a result of some components, especially semiconductors, just not showing up.
The particular case of the car manufacturers and their inability to procure enough semiconductors was absolutely self inflicted and I seriously doubt will happen to the space industry since the rad-hard processes are pretty custom and use very long lead times.
Car manufacturers are used to JIT procurement, and since they are used to be the main customer usually strong arm their suppliers into bearing the financial and logistical cost of slumps in demand. In all their arrogance they used the exit clauses on their semiconductor supply contracts. Little did they understand that they were a relatively small client and there were plenty of other clients requesting those same fab lines to produce different semiconductors. When car demand picked up faster than expected, the found they had 18 to 24 month lead times on the chips that their almost finished cars needed to leave the factory.
That level of arrogance and lack of understanding of your supply base is absolutely anathema to the space industry, at least from what I've seen. Still, they have had a huge amount of supply chain delays. Which was expected given how labor intensive is this industry.
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The US car industry is still not back to 2019 production levels as a result of some components, especially semiconductors, just not showing up.
The particular case of the car manufacturers and their inability to procure enough semiconductors was absolutely self inflicted and I seriously doubt will happen to the space industry since the rad-hard processes are pretty custom and use very long lead times.
Car manufacturers are used to JIT procurement, and since they are used to be the main customer usually strong arm their suppliers into bearing the financial and logistical cost of slumps in demand. In all their arrogance they used the exit clauses on their semiconductor supply contracts. Little did they understand that they were a relatively small client and there were plenty of other clients requesting those same fab lines to produce different semiconductors. When car demand picked up faster than expected, the found they had 18 to 24 month lead times on the chips that their almost finished cars needed to leave the factory.
That level of arrogance and lack of understanding of your supply base is absolutely anathema to the space industry, at least from what I've seen. Still, they have had a huge amount of supply chain delays. Which was expected given how labor intensive is this industry.
JIT delivery (not procurement, two different things) exacerbated the issue, but the core issue was simply too much demand and not enough supply in the semiconductor sector, with lead times to ramp supply measuring in years.
Small commodity chips like those used in the automotive sector were hit hard, because when a fab has more demand than they can address they can pick and choose their customers, and will go for customers who provide the highest profit per unit die area. That mean servicing buyers who were fabbing large high-performance-high-value dies for hyperscalers, because they could both pay top dollar and minimise packaging cot per wafer (if it costs $1 per die to chop and bond, and you have 10 big dies on a wafer or 1000 tiny dies on a wafer, that's $990 per wafer not being spent on overhead and not hitting packaging capacity limits). It got to the point where contractual penalties for late delivery were less than the increase in profit from bumping small-chip customers, so wait times extended even further. Suppliers who want their smaller ICs thus either need to out-pay these high-value customers for fab capacity (and pass those costs onto their customers) or wait for available capacity.
Aerospace customers are not immune to this. Whilst the packaging is more towards the exotic end (ceramic and metallic rather than basic polymer or flip-chip) the actual dies themselves are nothing special, and use the same few-gens-behind nodes that are in extreme demand. At least aerospace customers will usually tolerate a significant price increase, but the tiny volumes involved means the cost to fab houses (who need to swap out masks for maybe a one or two die run) makes them less favourable customers anyway.
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The particular case of the car manufacturers and their inability to procure enough semiconductors was absolutely self inflicted and I seriously doubt will happen to the space industry since the rad-hard processes are pretty custom and use very long lead times.
Car manufacturers are used to JIT procurement...
Related:
Chris Winslett, Lockheed Martin program director for its work on the SDA Transport Layer, said that many smallsat manufacturers had, in recent years, shifted away from space-grade components because of their long lead times in favor of more widely available commercial and automotive-grade alternatives. “But with the issues of the pandemic, we actually saw a lot of commercial and automotive parts have longer lead times than space parts,” he said. “It’s been an interesting few years.”
https://spacenews.com/supply-chain-challenges-also-present-opportunities-for-the-space-industry/
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The particular case of the car manufacturers and their inability to procure enough semiconductors was absolutely self inflicted and I seriously doubt will happen to the space industry since the rad-hard processes are pretty custom and use very long lead times.
Car manufacturers are used to JIT procurement...
Related:
Chris Winslett, Lockheed Martin program director for its work on the SDA Transport Layer, said that many smallsat manufacturers had, in recent years, shifted away from space-grade components because of their long lead times in favor of more widely available commercial and automotive-grade alternatives. “But with the issues of the pandemic, we actually saw a lot of commercial and automotive parts have longer lead times than space parts,” he said. “It’s been an interesting few years.”
https://spacenews.com/supply-chain-challenges-also-present-opportunities-for-the-space-industry/
You are right, I was thinking of the normal NASA missions that use rad-hard and space-rated everything. Small sat manufacturers used to get away with skimming batches of industrial grade parts are a lot more impacted. But generally speaking, being willing to pay 100usd for a 5usd part and only needing 10 is usually a lot easier than needing 200,000.
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There's nothing at all in the Decadal about the need for a new communications relay to support Mars surface operations. In the unlikely event of a budget increase, they do support the start of the Mars Life Explorer lander. This appears to be designed to need an orbiting communications relay. Unfortunately the Decadal hasn't bothered to recommend a communications relay or set aside any money for it. Under those circumstances, Mars Life Explorer is not a serious proposal in my opinion.
Because the Decadal has not recommended or funded a communications relay, I suspect they intend to gamble on the current fleet of relay orbiters outlasting the rovers. Maybe Trace Gas Orbiter will last for 25 years, or maybe they will have to park the rovers when the last communications relay fails.
They do recommend an increase to the Mars Exploration program from the current level of $234 million in 2023 to about $500 million per year by the end of the decade. However there is no vision for what to do with that money. I suspect that money will be eaten by cost overruns in Mars Sample Return. Planning a new communications relay infrastructure will probably be left to the 2032 Decadal survey.
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I agree on the importance of a Martian (and indeed an interplanetary one too) comm network, but it is a technical issue, not scientific which is the decadal's focus each time.
I will mention, for the sake of science, such a network, either Martian or across the solar system, could include space weather suites that could generate some useful data for safety and various studies.
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There's nothing at all in the Decadal about the need for a new communications relay to support Mars surface operations. In the unlikely event of a budget increase, they do support the start of the Mars Life Explorer lander. This appears to be designed to need an orbiting communications relay. Unfortunately the Decadal hasn't bothered to recommend a communications relay or set aside any money for it. Under those circumstances, Mars Life Explorer is not a serious proposal in my opinion.
I think you missunderstand how the decadal and money interact. It cannot "set money aside" for something. It can only recommend how congress/nasa spends money.
As far as the Life Explorer - it seemed to be notional. A general answer to the question of "what next", since MSR has been sucking all the air out of the room for a decade.
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As far as the Life Explorer - it seemed to be notional. A general answer to the question of "what next", since MSR has been sucking all the air out of the room for a decade.
And that recommendation was made with the assumption of and support for the Mars Ice Mapper mission occurring.
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As far as the Life Explorer - it seemed to be notional. A general answer to the question of "what next", since MSR has been sucking all the air out of the room for a decade.
I'd be a bit more nuanced than that. Keep in mind that the 2011 decadal survey said two things about MSR: 1-build the caching rover, 2-do technology development to enable MSR at a future time. OMB fought #1 for a little while and then gave in. #2 was squashed until summer 2017, when NASA was finally allowed to start thinking about it.
The 2011 decadal survey did not go beyond 1 and 2 because 1 and 2 were their top priorities, and they also realized that if they offered up anything else for Mars, they would not get 1 and 2, but would get that other thing instead. So they kept it off the table. There were some grumblings within the Mars community about not doing enough future planning, but the political realities were pretty obvious that if you wanted MSR, then you really had to keep your focus on that.
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I agree on the importance of a Martian (and indeed an interplanetary one too) comm network, but it is a technical issue, not scientific which is the decadal's focus each time.
That's not quite correct. The decadal can comment on infrastructure requirements. They can discuss the need for relay capability. Now precisely how much and how to do it is a little too far down in the weeds for them to go into, but they can certainly tackle those problems.
When we did the planetary decadal survey midterm in 2018, we had a lot of discussions about the need for relay capability. It got really contentious, because at the time there was discussion of a dedicated Mars Telecom Orbiter, and some people were worried that such a dedicated spacecraft would take away from science missions. There was also question as to whether a proposed change in MAVEN's orbit would affect this. NASA later did an in-depth assessment of their relay capabilities. (There's more to it than that, but that's the basics.)
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I agree on the importance of a Martian (and indeed an interplanetary one too) comm network, but it is a technical issue, not scientific which is the decadal's focus each time.
I will mention, for the sake of science, such a network, either Martian or across the solar system, could include space weather suites that could generate some useful data for safety and various studies.
I think the infrastructure and the science missions it is intended to support needs to be looked at as an integrated package. The infrastructure will cost money so it has to deliver enough value to the science for it to be worth it. And often the cheapest way to provide communications relay is to put it on a science orbiter. Since multiple missions are involved the decadal survey is a good way to coordinate everything.
A dedicated communications relay at Mars L1 or areostationary could include a space weather sensor to provide context for Maven. It could also have a camera to watch dust storm activity across the sunlit face of Mars. With an atomic clock it could provide a precise time signal which might be useful for navigation. The question is how much it costs and how much value it provides to present and future science missions. The decadal survey is a good opportunity to think about that question.
@deadman1204...What I meant was that they need to identify a funding source
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And that recommendation was made with the assumption of and support for the Mars Ice Mapper mission occurring.
I think the Decadal killed Mars Ice Mapper by criticizing the science value of the mission. They said:
as presently articulated, iMIM measurements only minimally address the science goals and measurement requirements for Mars ice mapping
Mars Ice Mapper used a Canadian radar which I believe was an based on a radar they have used for their earth observation missions. (RADARSAT) Modifying it to meet more demanding requirements wasn't going to happen.
Without full support from the science community, there was no way the mission was going to proceed. What worried me about the mission was that it wasn't clear how much it would cost and how the bill was going to be split between the partners. In particular, how much would it cost NASA's science budget? Also, a 2028 launch wouldn't work because then the funding needs would overlap with mars sample return.
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https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news/2022/08/02/nasa-planetary-science-division-townhall-decadal-survey-initial-response/ (https://www.lpi.usra.edu/planetary_news/2022/08/02/nasa-planetary-science-division-townhall-decadal-survey-initial-response/)
NASA Planetary Science Division Townhall – Decadal Survey Initial Response
NASA’s Planetary Science Division (PSD) is hosting a virtual community townhall Thursday, August 18, 2022, from 2 to 4 p.m. EDT. This townhall is a forum for Dr. Lori Glaze, PSD Director, to provide the agency’s initial public response to the NASEM Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023–2032. Public questions will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Questions can be submitted before or during the event at https://nasa.cnf.io/sessions/y2xm/#!/dashboard (https://nasa.cnf.io/sessions/y2xm/#!/dashboard).
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NASA Embraces Planetary Science Decadal Recommendations, With Caveats (https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-embraces-planetary-science-decadal-recommendations-with-caveats/)
Glaze showed three charts today comparing how much it would cost to execute everything that the Decadal recommended for the next 10 years, $41.120 billion, versus the Decadal’s estimate of a “flat” planetary science budget that assumes two percent inflationary increases, $34.990 billion, versus NASA’s current 5-year plan.
The top chart shows the funding needed for both Uranus and Enceladus, while the second includes only Uranus. Glaze said studies of how to execute the Uranus Orbiter-Probe mission will start no later than FY2024 with launch possibly in the early 2030s. As for Enceladus, those studies will not begin before FY2026.
“The near term is pretty challenging,” Glaze said. “We need to keep in mind that the current planning budget we have now is short of even the level budget, so [I’m] just trying to set expectations.” The Decadal is “inspirational and we will continue to advocate for budgets to support the aspirational goals of the Survey. But just to have a little bit of reality, we need to recognize that some of the recommended activities” may not be achievable.
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With the way the economy is going I’d of thought they should’ve planning for a reduced budget if anything.
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PSD's response documents are available:
https://science.nasa.gov/files/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/Initial%20(90-day)%20written%20response%20to%20the%202023%E2%80%932032%20Planetary%20Science%20and%20Astrobiology%20Decadal%20Survey.pdf (https://science.nasa.gov/files/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/Initial%20(90-day)%20written%20response%20to%20the%202023%E2%80%932032%20Planetary%20Science%20and%20Astrobiology%20Decadal%20Survey.pdf)
https://science.nasa.gov/files/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/20220818-DecadalTownhall-Glaze-FINAL.pdf (https://science.nasa.gov/files/science-pink/s3fs-public/atoms/files/20220818-DecadalTownhall-Glaze-FINAL.pdf)
Biggest issue is that even the "flat" recommended budget by the Survey is higher than the projected budget in the last submitted White House budget. That could be adjusted up starting in the FY24 proposal, which is in the early stages of being put together.
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I'm concerned there simply won't be a new budget for a few years now.
Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
So my fear is that there will only be continuing resolutions for a few years.
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In 2011, when the planetary decadal survey was released, NASA's planetary science budget had just been cut by 20%. You might take a look at what happened in the decade after that.
Budget is not destiny.
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Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
Currently, NASA's budget is not seen as a partisan issue; what little discussion there is of it is at the margins on relatively small shifts in funding for specific programs. NASA, and particularly the planetary program, did better under Trump than Obama. I also believe that the planetary program is seen as an area of a "space race" with China.
The one division of NASA that is viewed through partisan lenses is the Earth science program, which does much better with Democrats than Republicans.
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I'm concerned there simply won't be a new budget for a few years now.
Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
So my fear is that there will only be continuing resolutions for a few years.
Who says it’s going to switch hands. That’s way less certain than it was six months ago for reasons that are well OT for this forum. It’s just as likely to be a red ripple rather than wave.
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Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
Currently, NASA's budget is not seen as a partisan issue
I Agree that this is always a bright spot. NASA tends to simply be the victim of general politics. A lack of a budget wouldn't be anything about NASA, but general politics.
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Space News summary:
https://spacenews.com/nasa-cautions-planetary-science-funding-falls-short-of-decadal-projections/
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We'll probably get one L mission, the Uranus one. The others no way
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We'll probably get one L mission, the Uranus one. The others no way
If you mean an ESA L class mission, I believe that ESA has designated it's next L mission to an icy moon mission. It might also fund a contribution to a Uranus mission. Anyone know differently?
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We'll probably get one L mission, the Uranus one. The others no way
If you mean an ESA L class mission, I believe that ESA has designated it's next L mission to an icy moon mission. It might also fund a contribution to a Uranus mission. Anyone know differently?
I mean the large NASA mission, where the Uranus mission came out on top.
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We'll probably get one L mission, the Uranus one. The others no way
I imagine the fact that China has indicated they are interested in doing an ice giants mission will focus a few political minds.
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Even with all the dreams of infinite money, theres also a fuel issue.
There isn't enough plutonium to do all 3 proposed new frontiers missions for outer planet stuff, uranus, and the orbi-lander.
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I'm concerned there simply won't be a new budget for a few years now.
Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
So my fear is that there will only be continuing resolutions for a few years.
This assumption is disproven by recent history. During the last 8 years of GOP controlled house, the enacted budget was increased above the requested amounts in all but one year.
Fun fact in FY2019 there was the biggest increase for the planetary science division budget in something like 40+ years compared to both the previous enactment and budget request and this happened with a congress that had bot chambers with republican majorities.
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Indeed.
But thanks to the record inflation of this administration, I think the new house will have to cut spending if they want to stablize the market and actually help people, cause nothing hurts more daily life that the increased prices of everything right now. The economy in 2019 was thriving compared to now.
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I'm concerned there simply won't be a new budget for a few years now.
Since the house will switch hands, republicans will try to stop any budget from happening while Dems hold the presidency. As well, they suddenly think cutting all spending is the most important thing (just like last time this happened) because they they aren't in control and that hurst the other party more than them (ignoring the actual country of course).
So my fear is that there will only be continuing resolutions for a few years.
This assumption is disproven by recent history. During the last 8 years of GOP controlled house, the enacted budget was increased above the requested amounts in all but one year.
Fun fact in FY2019 there was the biggest increase for the planetary science division budget in something like 40+ years compared to both the previous enactment and budget request and this happened with a congress that had bot chambers with republican majorities.
um...... remember the tea party? Your kinda ignoring actual history.
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NASA planetary science budget remains under stress (https://spacenews.com/nasa-planetary-science-budget-remains-under-stress/)
Despite a small funding increase for 2023, NASA’s planetary science programs still face “significant stress” financially that contributed to the delay of one mission and could push back the start of others.
NASA received $3.2 billion for planetary science in the fiscal year 2023 omnibus spending bill signed into law Dec. 29. That was about $80 million more than what the agency received for planetary science in 2022 and $40 million above its request for 2023.
That increase, though, may do little to address some of the challenges NASA has been facing with current and future missions. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, outlined those issues in presentations last month to the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee and at a town hall during the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).