Category Why Mars

Age 52, Scott Hubbard was a longtime NASA official. With degrees in physics and astronomy, he had risen through the ranks of NASA-Ames and was associate director of that laboratory at the time he got his call from Goldin. A week after NASA announced Hubbard’s appointment, Stone at JPL reluctantly named Fir – ouz Naderi to be his counterpart as the single point of contact on Mars. Stone had wanted Naderi for a different assignment, but headquarters prevailed. It was made clear by Weiler’s deputy, Earle Huckins, that “Dan Goldin wanted the very best talent applied to fixing the Mars program.”49 Like Hubbard, Naderi was a veteran scientist-manager but had not been directly connected with the two Mars failures. The two men—Hubbard and Naderi—did not know one another, but they “clicked.” Hubbard, however, kept reminding Naderi that he was a “NASA-man,” not a “JPL-man.” Naderi went out of his way to come across in that way in his dealings with Hubbard—and JPL. There was much anxiety on Stone’s part that JPL would be punished for the failures and lose its prized position as lead center for planetary missions.50 He had reason to be worried, as there were severe critics ofJPL in NASA Headquarters. One senior official urged Goldin to replace JPL top management.51

The third key member of the recovery team was James Garvin. Garvin was a scientist at NASA-Goddard who had been a graduate student at Brown under Tim Mutch, the Viking investigator and briefly NASA associate administra­tor for science. Garvin had worked on Mars Observer and had been leading the Decadal Planning Team for Goldin on NASA’s long-term future. Goldin himself asked Garvin to join Hubbard and Naderi. Garvin was to play a major role in developing a strong connection between the team and the broader Mars technical community.52 Hubbard wanted to reach beyond NASA and its vari­ous elite advisors to Mars investigators generally. Garvin was to help assemble a series of workshops with Mars scientists who thereby would provide input to the recovery team’s decisions. These workshops would evolve into a novel mechanism, the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG), which would become an ongoing connection between NASA and the broader Mars research community.

Finally, Hubbard asked two Viking veterans, Jim Martin and Gentry Lee, to serve as advisors. They would be the core of Hubbard’s “kitchen cabinet.” Weiler had already set some guidelines for the new program, but it would be up to Hubbard and his team to determine pace and specific missions. The quest for life—past or present—was still the ultimate goal of the robotic program. Getting to it, however, would be through a different strategy.

There were two Mars decisions that came up almost immediately in April for NASA which were important to recovery. One was forced on NASA by the schedule. The other was one Hubbard personally pushed to help free his team to develop a restructured program.53

Weiler took the lead on the first.54 Under the now-suspended Mars Surveyor Program, NASA was to launch an orbiter and lander every two years. The next window was coming up very quickly—2001. JPL and contractor Lockheed Mar­tin were building the spacecraft. What was to be done?

Weiler reasoned that the orbiter had failed in 1999 owing to the bizarre mis­take in communication between contractor and JPL over metric/English navi­gation units. The orbiter had been technically sound as far as anyone knew. On the other hand, the lander, which had crashed, required significant modification.

After getting advice from Hubbard and others, Weiler gave a go-ahead to develop the orbiter and cancelled the lander. The termination decision did not please Lockheed Martin or JPL, but served to send a message Weiler wanted to transmit—that he was taking more authority over the program.55 The days when decision making was largely delegated and headquarters stood back, downsizing as it did so, were over. Weiler was intent on building up a more robust Science Mission Directorate, and he did not intend to be a passive manager. The 2001 orbiter mission was called Odyssey, in honor of Arthur C. Clarke’s book and screenplay for the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The next decision was the indefinite postponement of the MSR mission. Weiler had indicated that it was coming, but Hubbard made sure it came right away. An early MSR had driven decision making on Mars since the program reorientation following the meteorite excitement. Hubbard did not want it to drive the recovery effort. When would MSR come? Hubbard believed that MSR was the right goal for the robotic program—but it had to come only when “ready,” and that would probably be beyond the 10-year program he and his associates were designing. Naderi called the proposed accelerated MSR mission “science fiction.”56 Hubbard detected at least four significant technological bar­riers to MSR success. He went to JPL and confronted MSR’s project manager, O’Neil. He pointed out the technical challenges. He asked, “What makes you so sure you can overcome these problems?” In addition, Hubbard challenged the MSR cost estimate. Then at $750 million, it was hopelessly low in his view.57

Hubbard subsequently went to a large workshop of Mars scientists, armed with a new sample return estimate. There may have been 65 to 80 people there, as he recalled. Most of them fervently embraced MSR as a goal as soon as pos­sible. But Hubbard posed this question to the group: “The current estimate we have is that MSR will cost $2 billion plus. Where do I go to get a sample worth that?” No one in the audience had an answer.58

The next step for Hubbard was to go to Weiler, who agreed with his position to put MSR on indefinite hold. Finally, Hubbard and Weiler met with Goldin, who had been the champion of the accelerated MSR mission. Before we go for MSR, Hubbard told the administrator, “you’ve got to have scientific under­standing.” But, he emphasized, the Mars community, including the astrobiolo – gists, did not have that understanding. Moreover, to get scientific answers would take the development of “four missing technologies.” There simply wasn’t the knowledge or time to make an early launch. MSR would have to be deferred for some years, he explained. Typically, Goldin responded to statements about dif­ficulties with “You’re not trying hard enough,” But not this time. Goldin could not have liked what he heard, but he did not object. The message subsequently went to Stone: “You must go along!”59 The MSR project was cancelled.

It fell to Hubbard to break the news about MSR to the French. Goldin had enlisted them in planning for an MSR mission. The French were not happy,

nor were other potential international partners. Hubbard left the door open to possible later participation, but not in the near term.60

Griffin got off to a rapid start, making a series of decisions, technical and orga­nizational, relating primarily to human spaceflight. He was determined to nar­row the four-year gap between the shuttle and its successor to one or two years and took close control of decision making regarding that front. He ordered relevant officials to plan in accord with the Moon-Mars priority, including the head of the Science Directorate. Although he said he would review O’Keefe’s Hubble servicing termination and ultimately reversed O’Keefe on this matter, he gave the science enterprise far less attention than he did human spaceflight. However, he did listen to what he had heard from critics of the O’Keefe-Diaz “strategic” approach.

As the Griffin-led review process of NASA programs proceeded in Washing­ton, NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity continued to perform remarkably well on Mars. They were already well beyond their 90-day prescribed lifetimes and still going strongly. They were traveling further and reaching higher than expected. They were viewing scenes never before observed and sending these images back to Earth for scientists to analyze and the general public to witness.

Spirit’s and Opportunity’s achievements were based on decisions made years before. There is a long latency between decisions and their execution in space policy. Thus, decisions made at NASA years before would influence what Grif­fin could or could not do in his tour. In May, in his characteristically direct and laconic way, he said that NASA “can’t afford to do everything on its plate.” Looking for efficiencies, he sent a document to Congress on May 11, describ­ing sweeping changes affecting most NASA programs. He told Congress that human space exploration would trump the science budget only “under the most extreme budget pressure.” At a Senate hearing the next day, he stated, “We have tried to be sensitive to the priorities of the affected research communities and have listened carefully to their input.” He said NASA had responded accord­ingly.5 The overall spending level for space and Earth science was unchanged. However, he said there would be shifts within the science envelope.

What the “shifts” to which Griffin alluded meant for Mars became clear in July. Figueroa had “filled out” the 10-year MEP with a 2009 telecommunica­tions satellite. NASA now killed plans for that satellite. McCuistion explained the decision as driven by a diminished need for a dedicated relay at Mars and enlarged funding requirements of astronomy, Earth science, and planets other than Mars. The “core” program that Hubbard and his team had designed in the era of Goldin remained. But the “augmented” program that came with Bush’s human exploration initiative under O’Keefe was deferred. The “safe on Mars” element that linked robotic with human spaceflight died. The funding wedge O’Keefe had instituted for the Mars program to reach $1 billion in 2010 was cut 50%. Diaz made the cuts under Griffin’s direction.6

Joseph Alexander, staff director of the NAS SSB, applauded the rebalancing decision. He pointed out that Mars exploration had long commanded a large share of NASA’s space science spending and said he was pleased to see Griffin’s restoration of balance to the science program. “In the grand scheme of things there were people who felt that the emphasis on Mars was starting to come at the expense of other areas,” Alexander noted.

The Planetary Society’s Friedman was not happy with the downplaying of Mars. He protested that “taking Mars out of the exploration program, as was done in the budget cuts, and pulling back on the infrastructure for the eventual Mars outpost, could create another dead-ended program with no destination and no public support.”7 What Griffin was doing was sacrificing the longer-term Mars requirements for more immediate needs of other science programs. Mars Sample Return, for example, was pushed farther into the indefinite future.

Even as decisions went against more distant Mars interests, Mars spaceflights already scheduled moved ahead. Due up in August was the Mars Reconnais­sance Orbiter. “It’s the most powerful suite of instruments ever sent to another planet,” said McCuistion. “The MRO spacecraft is many things,” commented Richard Zurek, the JPL primary scientist for the mission. “It’s a weather satel­lite, it’s a geological surveyor, and it’s a scout for future missions.” James Garvin, now NASA’s chief scientist at headquarters, called the August 12 launch “utterly stupendous.” However, while excited about MRO, Mars advocates could not help but express regret that MSR was “still only a dream.”8

Weiler’s first task was to consider any changes in managing MSL, delayed two years. Naderi, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars director, had been suc­ceeded a few years earlier by Fuk Li. The consensus in NASA was that Li was hamstrung in overseeing MSL by Stern.2 Indeed, JPL and the Mars science community pointed fingers at Stern for many of MSL’s problems. The conse­quence was that the only significant personnel change Weiler made was to move the JPL project manager, Cook, to a deputy slot. Pete Theisinger, the project manager for Spirit and Opportunity, and one of JPL’s most respected managers, was put in charge. The fact that Cook remained attested to the fact that NASA and JPL held him in high regard and believed that his expertise was essential. But NASA leaders also wanted to show Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, and others that it would not tolerate cost overruns.3

Cook soon developed a plan for Theisinger, JPL, and NASA showing how the various technical issues that had led to delay could be mitigated. The plan was approved up the line, and additional organizational and personnel adjust­ments made. Then, JPL got to work in making the technical improvements. Actuators were the prime culprit, but so also were avionics, sampling instru­ments, and other technologies. As Cook reflected in a paper he subsequently wrote, “As the project got bigger and more complex, the problems grew not linearly, but geometrically.”4

It was not long before NASA and JPL began feeling fortunate that the deci­sion to delay was made. But the cost increases in MSL went beyond the $400 million calculated at the time the decision was announced in December 2008. Soon MSL was up to $2.5 billion in total costs. The good news was that some of MSL’s harshest critics, such as Lee at JPL, were seeing MSL as viable for a 2011 launch.5

As Weiler saw the prospects of MSL improve, he put more money into the Mars program. He tried to replenish it after years of cutbacks. But he needed

to plan for the post-MSL future and how to pay for it. He saw a Mars Together strategy as imperative.

The Mars scientific community, led by the Planetary Society, American Geo­physical Union, and American Astronomical Society, reacted sharply to the budget cuts. They focused on Congress and the White House to try to restore the money taken from planetary science in general and Mars in particular. The Planetary Society called its campaign “Save Our Science.” It generated thou­sands of signatures on petitions and e-mails of protest. The Society’s leader, Bill Nye, personally went from California to Washington to speak to key congres­sional staffers and lawmakers.8 Congressman Schiff, representing the district including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was active lobbying his colleagues on the House appropriations subcommittee responsible for NASA’s budget.

On February 29, congressional hearings were held to consider the president’s budget request for NASA. The House appropriations subcommittee, on which Schiff served, was critical. Schiff was a Democrat, but a bipartisan alliance at­tacked the Mars cuts. Obama’s science advisor Holdren, testifying before the subcommittee, endured a fierce grilling. He explained that the White House and senior members of Congress (primarily Senate Democrats) had reached agreement on NASA priorities. These were the heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and its companion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Commercial Crew Program for independent access to the International Space Station by 2017. With a proposed NASA budget less than the current fiscal year, something had to give, he explained, and it was the plan­etary program, especially Mars. The lawmakers were not sympathetic.9

When Bolden came before the subcommittee, he was similarly lambasted.

Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) had a solution for the Mars problem: transfer money from an administration priority, commercial crew, to Mars. Wolf was an avid critic of commercial crew. Bolden resisted such an argument and empha­sized that NASA was still aiming for Mars, but in a different way.10

The White House was defensive and allowed two major Office of Manage­ment and Budget officials involved with NASA oversight to meet with NRC planetary scientists. The administration wanted to make it clear OMB was not against big science flagships, as was being alleged. Paul Shawcross, branch chief for science and space, and Joydip Kundu, who handled NASA’s science budget, told a joint meeting of the NRC’s Space Studies Board and its Aeronautical and Space Engineering Board that OMB had no bias against flagships. They did not draw the line at $1 billion. OMB looked, rather, at budget coherence.11 That reassurance did not particularly ameliorate scientists’ feelings.

The House subcommittee subsequently provided a modest increment in Mars funding, as did its Senate counterpart. The House panel also required the NRC to certify that the new Mars program would lead to MSR. Other­wise, it said, the money should go for a Europa mission (NRC’s second priority for a flagship mission). The congressional moves were part of a larger political struggle between Congress and the president in setting space priorities. But given the political dynamics of the time, there was no way of knowing when Congress would pass a budget and whether additional funds recommended for Mars would survive the larger legislative process.