Category Why Mars

Formulated at the end of the Clinton administration, the new “follow-the-water” Mars Exploration Program was adopted under President George W. Bush. The question at the conclusion of the Clinton years for Mars advocates was whether the political consensus favoring Mars would hold. Aiding in the transition to a positive decision was the Office of Management and Budget, which provided continuity in policy as administrations changed. Goldin’s successor as NASA Administrator, Sean O’Keefe, came from OMB and supported the new pro­gram. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster of 2003 led to a decision by Bush to initiate a human spaceflight effort to the Moon and Mars. O’Keefe gave even more priority to the robotic Mars program as a result. As Mars became a higher priority, rival programs suffered in the budget wars, and there was significant conflict within the space policy domain. Opponents of what they regarded as too much Mars at the expense of other space science needs rose in rebellion. Implementation of the existing MEP progressed well, however. Mars advocates used the favorable NASA setting under O’Keefe to transform the flagship mis­sion of the program, the Mars Science Laboratory, into an even bolder project.

Change and Continuity

On January 20, 2001, following the tumultuous aftermath of one of the closest presidential elections in history and a Supreme Court decision favoring him,

George W. Bush became president, with Dick Cheney as his vice president. Bush accepted Dan Goldin’s offer to remain as NASA Administrator until he found his own appointee. Goldin’s own power, so great under Clinton, dimin­ished quickly under Bush.1 Mars, however, would do well in the presidential transition.

Isakowitz pushed Hubbard and Garvin hard to refine their ideas. “The idea was to make our logic unassailable,” Garvin recalled. They spoke about funding and the sequence of missions in the 10-year program. “What would it take to get to Mars Sample Return?” Isakowitz asked. The Mars Smart Lander emerged as especially important in the progression of missions toward MSR. If the Mars Smart Lander was so important, Isakowitz said, “Why not send two?” Hub­bard and Garvin, conscious of costs, did not accept the invitation to go that direction.2

In the long meeting, NASA and OMB officials discussed and debated various issues. It helped that Hubbard and his associates had gotten support for the new program from authoritative scientific advisory groups. The science endorse­ment had to be clear. But so did possible benefits in terms of successful missions for the new Bush administration. As always, MSR was central to the meeting, but it would not take place under even two Bush terms. OMB, responsive to the president, wanted to know what Bush would get for the money.

Congress appropriated one year at a time, but OMB planned in five-year budget intervals. Hubbard was proposing a 10-year program. Budget options for the five-year projection included continuing the existing baseline, which was running approximately $350 million to $400 million a year; an increase over five years adding up to more than a half-billion dollars beyond the baseline; and expenditures even more ample that might accelerate MSR.

After the meeting, there were more interactions between NASA and OMB, with Weiler now deeply involved, as the new officials took power at the White House and OMB. Isakowitz and his political superiors negotiated the Bush bud­get for NASA. Far and away, the most serious issue with which they dealt was a huge overrun afflicting the International Space Station. The NASA science budget was consequently an area where Isakowitz and his civil service associates had more leeway in decision making. In early February, Weiler informed Hub­bard that the signs were positive from OMB for the Mars budget.

On February 28, the Bush White House gave a preview of its budget plans, promising more details in April. The major consequence for NASA in general was the new administration’s decision to tackle the space station overrun through major cuts in that program. However, the White House left space science rela­tively untouched. For Mars, the verdict was to give its advocates everything for which they had realistically hoped. As Hubbard later wrote, “The celebrations in the Mars Program office could be heard to the end of the [NASA building’s] hallway at 300 E St. SW. We had received, over the period from 2002 to 2006, a total increase of $548 million, or more than one hundred [million dollars] a year total.” He declared, “Now it was time for the champagne.”3

In April, the details of the Bush FY 2002 budget were clarified. NASA would go up to $14.5 billion dollars, a modest raise from the Clinton budget. Space science would grow from $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion dollars. The Bush White House fully adopted the new MEP and the more than half-billion-dollar raise developed by NASA and OMB for its first five years. To add money for Mars and other priorities at NASA, the Bush administration cancelled proposed missions to Pluto and the Sun.4 For Mars enthusiasts, the Bush transition was off to an ideal start—albeit at the expense of other space options. Moreover, the Mars advocacy coalition seemed now to include OMB.

In November and December, there were ups and downs for Griffin. The positive event was that Congress passed legislation that gave the agency the funds Bush had requested for FY 2006—$16.5 billion. It also, for the first time, formally endorsed the Vision for Space Exploration (i. e., Constellation) in the NASA Authorization Act of 2005.20 Congress also directed NASA to retain the general balance between human spaceflight and science, a directive not so welcome for Griffin in view of the setbacks he experienced in this period.

Griffin desperately wanted to speed up the development of Orion-Ares I, as the shuttle successor and initial capsule-rocket component of the Constellation Program was called. But what he discovered was that the shuttle cost projec­tions were now running $3 billion to $5 billion higher than estimated in 2004. One reason lay with the lengthy and expensive repairs. Also, instead of launch expenses declining as the shuttle neared its rescheduled 2010 retirement date, they would require virtually what they had cost in earlier years.21

Griffin went to OMB in November and asked for a realistic budget that returned the money taken away from NASA’s projected five-year budget just before he became administrator. He also wanted a substantial raise for NASA. The request was for almost a 9% increase. OMB responded with less than half that figure, with most of that going to Katrina-related facility repairs. Griffin warned that unless he got substantial additional program funds, he would be forced “to hold science’s budget fixed at FY 2006 levels for the next five years.” That would hurt all science programs, including the robotic Mars effort.22 Sci­ence editorialized that NASA was “back to eating seed corn.” It commented that the issue was not just human spaceflight versus science. When push came to shove, Griffin would have to go with lunar research over Mars research because the Moon came first in the Moon-Mars initiative.23

Many of the individuals who were involved in the post-Columbia interagency committee meetings in late 2003 and who assisted O’Keefe in getting the Vision for Space Exploration adopted were no longer in government or had moved to positions in government different from that decision period. Bush and Cheney were still around, but both preoccupied with issues other than space. Neither had given any indication, at least publicly, of wanting to use political capital to help NASA. Nevertheless, Griffin appealed beyond OMB to the president to get the money he believed the agency had to have to do its job.

Bush—like most presidents—did not customarily intervene in agency-OMB disputes, but Griffin was forcing the issue. In December, the day of decision arrived. The key protagonists at the meeting in the Oval Office were OMB di­rector Josh Bolton and Griffin. Bush, Cheney, presidential science advisor John Marburger, a state department representative, and various other high-ranking aides were present.24

It was quickly clear that the big raise Griffin wanted would not fly when the administration was still scrambling to pay for higher priorities, including the Iraq War and Katrina recovery. So how was NASA to pay the huge and unantici­pated shuttle costs? Bolton gave the OMB position, which was to end the shuttle early, arguing that it was a dead-end program. But terminating the shuttle meant also abandoning the space station and breaking a host of international com­mitments, as Griffin pointed out. Bush’s legislative aide told the president that Congress would not let him kill the shuttle even if he had wanted to do so.

The next option discussed was to take money from science—the five-year flatlining strategy Griffin had warned might happen without a significant NASA raise. Griffin felt forced by his desire to protect Constellation and narrow the shuttle succession gap to defend the science-flatline option. Bolton opposed him, and Marburger spoke up for science. In the end, Bush sought a measure of compromise. He gave NASA a modest raise. The shuttle would continue, as would the space station. Science would get a small increase, perhaps an aver­age of 1% a year for five years. Exploration systems would also go up, but they would have to help fund the shuttle costs.

Griffin had said “not one thin dime” would be taken from science to sup­port human spaceflight, specifically the Constellation Program. Now, thanks to the White House funding decision, money would come from both science and human exploration systems to pay for the shuttle shortfall. Griffin’s goal to narrow the four-year shuttle successor gap could now not be achieved.25 For the robotic MEP, these presidential choices created an environment that virtually guaranteed austerity for at least the remainder of Bush’s term.

In February 2006, Bush’s budget request was announced. NASA got addi­tional funds for Katrina repairs. Science at NASA received a 1.5% raise, but the five-year projection showed that mark declining to an average of 1% a year. Mars funding was cut in half. The Science magazine news report on the budget stated, “The prospects for NASA-funded scientists are among the bleakest in the federal government.”26

The reaction from scientists and their congressional supporters was immedi­ate and negative. Huntress, a former director of NASA’s Science Directorate, criticized NASA for “using money intended for science programs to fund con­tinued operation of the shuttle.” Like OMB, he could not agree with that trade­off, since the shuttle was “a program scheduled for termination.” Congressman Sherwood Boehlert said he was “greatly concerned” with the science cutbacks.27

Among the scientists, the planetary researchers were most alarmed. Rita Beebe, a New Mexico State University researcher and member of the NAS SSB, complained that the planetary scientists had been especially hit by the cuts. “The proposed budget transforms an existing, vibrant program into a stagnant holding pattern,” she declared. Beebe suggested that NASA was “reenacting the events of the 1970s,” a time when the planetary program went from an active series of missions to the doldrums. She called the damage “immediate and in­creasingly irreversible.”28 An astrobiology researcher, Rocco Mancinelli, called the budget “a disaster,” coming just when “instruments aimed at understanding the fingerprints of life. . . are being built for the Mars Science Laboratory.”29 The Planetary Society (of which Huntress was the current president) launched a Save Our Science (SOS) campaign among its members.30

Griffin called the scientific response “a hysterical reaction, a reaction out of all proportion to the damage done.”31 There was still a great deal of money for science, he pointed out, and the 1% five-year raise was better than the 0.5% cut borne by federal nondefense discretionary programs generally. Griffin’s words seemed to make many scientists all the angrier, and they reminded him of his “not one thin dime” pledge the year before. Fisk pointed out that 1% was no raise; it translated into “a major retrenchment” given inflation.32

Fisk and his SSB decided that they should take the lead in building a united front among space scientists. Unless they did so, the various disciplines and specialties would fight among themselves and weaken their position. At best, a united community might be able to appeal to Congress to enlarge the science budget. The lawmakers made their decisions regarding the president’s budget proposal over the course of 2006. At minimum, the scientists would try to agree among themselves as to what were top priorities that had to be protected, rather than having those priorities determined by NASA managers or Congress.

Cleave, Griffin’s embattled science chief, bore the brunt of the scientists’ ire. She was pilloried for cancelling a small mission in March—an asteroid project called Dawn—shortly after she had promised a congressional committee that she would be attentive to such missions. These kinds of smaller projects benefit – ted academic scientists and their graduate students. Critics charged that NASA seemed intent on protecting the larger “flagship” missions and the institutions behind them, such as JPL. They were flagships, Griffin insisted, because the scientific community, via the NAS, had helped make them so through NAS decadal surveys of science priorities.33 The “big” versus “little” science balance clearly was an issue, as was Mars versus non-Mars planetary science.

On July 17, NASA’s new Administrator, Charles Bolden, was sworn in. A retired Marine Corps general and former astronaut, the 62-year-old Bolden was very much a Mars advocate. His orientation was human spaceflight, but his Mars interest and internationalist bent augured that there would be support at the top of NASA for what Weiler was trying to do. In his first address to NASA employees, Bolden declared that most NASA people wanted to go to Mars, but “there are a lot of ways to get there. The challenge for us in the next few months is to figure out the single most cost-efficient path to get there.”22

Early in September, the Augustine panel reported to Bolden and the White House on its preliminary findings.23 Its most striking comment was that NASA was on an “unsustainable trajectory.” There was too great a gap between what it was supposed to do and the money it had to do its job. The Augustine panel had been asked to concentrate on human spaceflight. But what it said about sustain­ability in this area had applicability to everything NASA did.

The panel was charged to come up with options for NASA and the presi­dent, and it did so. Two that fit within NASA’s existing budget profile it did not believe worth pursuing, since they kept the United States where it was, in low-Earth orbit. The three it believed were potentially viable for an exploration agency were “Mars First,” “Moon First,” and “Flexible Path.” All would require more money, $3 billion more than NASA currently had, to be added over the next few years, with annual cost-of-living increases each year subsequently. It emphasized that Mars was the “ultimate destination,” but there were too many uncertainties about risks to make it the first place to go for humans. “Moon First” represented the current pathway, which Obama had inherited from Bush. An alternative, “Flexible Path,” meant going to “free space” destinations, such as asteroids, Lagrange points (“special places in space of particular significance for scientific observatories and future space transportation infrastructure”24), and moons of Mars. In this option, the Moon base that was part of the Bush plan would be postponed, but not necessarily abandoned. The Flexible Path option was akin to the strategy many Mars advocates (such as Hubbard and the Planetary Society) proposed. They wanted to go to Mars as soon as possible and feared that the United States would get mired building a base on the Moon.

The Augustine panel did not explicitly recommend a choice between the Moon First and Flexible Path options, stating they were not mutually exclusive and both were relevant to Mars. But in subsequent congressional testimony and interviews, Augustine came across as favoring the Flexible Path. The Augustine panel noted that human and robotic spaceflight could be integrated well under the Flexible Path option. Thus, humans “could rendezvous with a Moon of Mars, then coordinate with or control robots on the Martian surface, taking ad­vantage of the relatively short communications times” this proximity provided. There were “a lot of exciting things one could do [via the Flexible Path] along the way to Mars,” Augustine told a House committee.25

In October, the Augustine panel produced its final report.26 There were no surprises. It provided much greater detail on all aspects of human spaceflight. However, its basic message was consistent with the interim document when it came to future exploration: Mars was the “ultimate destination,” and the most viable and desirable routes “worthy of a great nation” were Moon First and Flexible Path. The problem was that the current spending was far inadequate for either approach, again calling for an additional $3 billion by FY 2014, with cost-of-living raises each year afterward.

The report went to Bolden and the White House science advisor, John Hold – ren. What they would recommend to President Obama remained to be seen. What he would decide remained to be seen. What stood out for many observers was the panel’s emphasis on Mars as a destination for scientific and exploration purposes, as well as the call for using a “first among equals” strategy for NASA to achieve its goals with international partners.

The Augustine panel’s report seemed to strengthen Weiler’s hand as he worked to secure the future of the robotic Mars program. Weiler commented, “I think the trend [in Mars space policy] is more and more collaboration. .. we’re talking about getting extra value… out of a mission.”27 While the United States remained the dominant space power, there were many spacefaring nations ac­tive in the twenty-first century. The United States was talking with ESA about Mars, but there were additional alliance possibilities. Significantly, Russia was collaborating with China on a mission to Phobos, the Mars moon that had long been a goal of the Russians. They had hoped to launch in 2009, but—like the United States with MSL—found they had to delay to 2011.28 As it turned out, the Russian probe never made it out of Earth orbit and crashed in the ocean.29

Mars was the destination of choice for many nations, and most acknowledged the virtues of partnership. The robotic program was seen as important in its own right, as well as a prelude to human spaceflight. With all its problems, NASA looked ahead and charted its course for the Red Planet through the robotic program. On November 5, 2009, Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, and Jean-Jaques Dordain, director general of the ESA, signed a potentially historic agreement to plan together a joint program. Henceforth, if this agreement were adopted and implemented, the United States and Europe would go to Mars in concert.30

NASA wasted no time in trying to build on the positive momentum the landing created. On August 20, NASA announced another Mars lander as the next in its midsized Discovery series of planetary exploration missions. This $425 million mission was called InSight, standing for Interior Exploration using Seismic In­vestigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. Led by JPL, it would be launched in 2016. It was a stationary lander to study the interior of Mars via seismic readings and would build on technology used for NASA’s 2007 Mars Phoenix.29

InSight won against two other non-Mars candidates (a probe to a Saturn moon and one to a comet). Given the excitement surrounding Curiosity and scientific and congressional outcry against the Mars budget cuts, the choice of InSight was not surprising. NASA wanted to send missions to Mars every 26 months. With MAVEN and InSight, NASA was now covered until 2016. The 2018 mission might initiate what Administrator Bolden had called Mars Next Decade. The question was, what would that mission be and how could NASA afford one?

For months, Mars advocates had been pressing Congress and the Obama administration. By September, the Planetary Society had generated 2,000 physi­cal petitions and 17,000 e-mails to Congress, asking for restoration of the cuts to planetary and Mars programs.30 Although some non-Mars scientists complained of “Mars myopia,” there was relative unity in the planetary community, in part because the NRC Decadal Survey had established Mars as the priority, and Squyres had emphasized to scientists the need for a unified front.

The problem for Mars advocates was that Congress and Washington gener­ally were preoccupied with the upcoming presidential election. It was very hard to get anything done in the fall of 2012 if it required congressional action. On Mars, the Curiosity rover began its trip along the surface of the Gale Crater to Mount Sharp. It would take a while to get there. In the meantime, NASA awaited the findings of the Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG) led by Figueroa.

On September 25, Figueroa and Grunsfeld briefed an NRC committee on various options that were being developed thus far by the MPPG. They noted that MPPG was trying to design a program that would be relevant to the mis­sions of space science, human exploration, and technology development. That was the charge Bolden had given Grunsfeld, and Grunsfeld had relayed to Figueroa. Bolden, like other NASA Administrators, saw Mars as a NASA-wide objective.

It was pointed out in the discussion that space science and human spaceflight had historically viewed one another with suspicion. Figueroa likened the rela­tion to that of an elephant and a mouse, with each wary of the other. Although the two programs were on different tracks, Figueroa believed they could come together on MSR. He said MSR remained the top science priority and he could see options for human spaceflight involvement in it. For example, astronauts could collect a sample en route back to Earth from Mars. They could ensure it was safe enough to be brought to the Earth’s surface without fear of planetary contamination. Although Figueroa did not specify where astronauts would col­lect the sample, some observers saw ISS as one possibility.31

Both Figueroa and Grunsfeld emphasized that sample return was the best goal to bring the three different directorates together: human spaceflight, science, and technology development. The technologies developed for MSR would benefit human and robotic endeavors. “Sending a mission to go to Mars and return a sample looks a lot like sending a crew to Mars and returning them safely,” Grunsfeld pointed out.32

The immediate need, Grunsfeld stated, was to make a decision about 2018. If NASA were to launch in 2018, it would have to begin preparations in the next four or five months. The 2018 option was ideal from the standpoint of alignment of Mars and Earth, but was limited by what Grunsfeld called “the $800 million cost bogey.” That meant it would be an orbiter. Figueroa said a rover would cost from $1 billion to $1.5 billion.33

Speaking at an international conference the next day, Bolden noted that to reach the president’s goal of human spaceflight to Mars in the mid-2030s, it would take not only cooperation within NASA but also international coopera­tion. Bolden came from a human spaceflight emphasis. He later commented that scientists saw MSR as “the Holy Grail” of the robotic program. “The ques­tion for many of us is what the timing of accomplishing the Holy Grail is. Do you have to do it before you can send humans? Some would say ‘certainly.’ But when Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, we did not have a sample.”34

There was obviously debate within NASA about emphases and roles in any cooperative endeavor related to Mars, and the NASA Administrator and Sci­ence Mission director needed to agree. Sooner or later, issues about who paid for what would have to be worked out. In the fall of 2012, as NASA planned for Mars Next Decade, however, there were many more pressing unanswered questions, and they would have to remain unanswered pending further events on Mars and in the country.

One immediate question was answered in November when Obama was reelected president. For NASA, that election seemed a positive development because a victory for his opponent would have meant one more review of the entire NASA program. The agency desperately needed a measure of stability. There was already enough angst for NASA over the looming sequestration of funds, across agencies, in 2013, unless the president and Congress worked out a deal to avert this calamity. For NASA, sequestration would mean $1.7 billion in reductions.

Meanwhile, on Mars, the extreme excitement that accompanied Curiosity’s landing had given way to a muted expectation about what it would discover. The media clung to any word from NASA or the project’s lead scientist, Grotz – inger, which seemed to have anything to do with Martian life. In late November, Grotzinger said that Curiosity would be making history, and the media specu­lated that it had found organic molecules—that is, the building blocks of life sought in the mission and which Viking had not found years before. But that possibility was quickly dampened by NASA. There was, to be sure, optimism among Mars exploration advocates that the rover would find something signifi­cant for life, sooner or later, but the agency said, in effect, “not yet!”35