NASA-ESA Relations in the 1970s and 1980s: The Hubble Space. Telescope and the International Solar Polar Mission

The European collaborative space program went through a number of crises in the early 1970s that were resolved by making some important institutional and programmatic changes. ESRO’s mission was broadened to include both applications and scientific satellites.77 The European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) was dissolved, France took the lead in providing Europe with an autonomous launch capability, and a new body, the European Space Agency (ESA), was formed. ESA, like NASA, was now responsible for all aspects of the collaborative European space program (though countries could still pursue bi – and multilateral programs in parallel). To satisfy the diverse and sometimes conflicting needs of its member states, however, no single country was obliged to participate in a program if it did not want to. The exception to this was the science program that was mandatory: no government could opt out of it.78

This section discusses two programs to illustrate NASA-ESA relations in this period, the contribution to the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Solar Polar Mission (ISPM), which was renamed Ulysses. While the former can be counted a success, the latter, in which NASA withdrew its spacecraft from a two-satellite mission, has been regarded by Europeans as a cooperative failure never to be repeated. As Roger Bonnet, who became director of ESA’s Scientific Programme in 1983, puts it, “No one can deny that the ISPM crisis had a pro­found and lasting effect on the attitude of ESA toward NASA and on interna­tional cooperation in general.”79 For this reason alone it commands more space than the Hubble.

The Hubble Space Telescope was, as its historian Robert Smith tells us, “designed to be the most powerful optical telescope ever constructed.”80 Its centerpiece was a 2.4-meter primary mirror, whose collected light was reflected back through a hole in the mirror to be analyzed by five instruments and the telescope’s fine guidance system, which served as the sixth instrument. The main scientific justification for the Hubble was “the large increase in capability promised by the instrument’s resolving power, rather than its ability to tackle any particular scientific questions”81 Free from the interference of atmospheric absorption, the giant telescope made observations at wavelengths ranging from 120 nanometers to 1 millimeter, covering the ultraviolet, infrared, submillime­ter, and optical regions of the spectrum. The telescope was approved by Congress and the White House in 1974, construction began in 1977, and it was launched by the Space Shuttle in 1990.

During the planning stages of the Hubble (the famous astronomer’s name was actually only added in 1983) NASA discussed a possible contribution from Europe. A Faint Object Spectrograph was one interesting candidate for European participation that NASA quickly ruled out: it was seen as one of the most impor­tant instruments on the telescope and the major partner was obviously not going to hand it over to a junior participant. The alternative that emerged was a Faint Object Camera (FOC) that made use of a technique called the Imaging Photon Counting System developed by University College, London. The FOC’s task was to examine exceptionally faint objects that could only be “seen” by collect­ing light during many orbits of observation time. NASA agreed that this instru­ment could be one of those included in the system. What is more it was willing to accept Europe’s demand that this contribution need not be subject to open competition with other instrument proposals coming from the space science community. A place on board was guaranteed—on condition that NASA was satisfied that the Europeans had the technological capability required to build such a sophisticated piece of equipment.

A “tiger team” of US engineers and astronomers visited the laboratories and industrial plants engaged in the project to see for themselves. They concluded that the technology, the facilities, and the expertise required to build an FOC existed in Europe. But they were unhappy with the design being proposed. They felt that the inclusion on the camera of two possible light paths and a spectro­graph complicated the device’s mechanism unnecessarily and might cause cata­strophic failure in orbit. It was an FOC “with bells and whistles attached.”82

The negotiations over the space telescope were not without conflict. Some European scientists felt that it was unnecessary to use scarce resources for an expensive, dedicated instrument when NASA was soliciting proposals for experi­ments in open competition. Others resented the implication in the United States that European industry was not up to building a device as complex as the FOC. In any event it took an “unaccountable number of meetings” to find a suitable agreement.83 Nancy Roman, who was responsible for astronomy at NASA, was a central figure in these negotiations and is fondly remembered by the Europeans for her generous hospitality. The final arrangement gave ESA 15 percent of the observing time on all instruments in return for contributing one of them. This has been more than respected: in fact Europe’s share of observing time has been closer to 20 percent after proposal selection through NASA’s competitive peer review system (and thanks to their additional contribution of solar arrays, later replaced by the United States).84

The ISPM “was born to be the paradigm of ideal cooperation between NASA and ESA.”85 Its aim was to send two spacecraft, symmetrical with respect to the plane of the ecliptic, to simultaneously fly above the opposite poles of the sun. Each agency would develop its own satellite, and scientific instruments from both sides of the Atlantic would be accommodated on each in open competition after peer review. There would be no exchange of funds, and both were to be launched together on the Shuttle in February 1983.

In November 1977 the ESA space science community selected its satellite, along with participation in the Hubble, rejecting four other proposals. One of the reasons ISPM won out was that “the dual mission, to which ESA with its spacecraft would make a major contribution, offers the basis for a clean interface and fruitful cooperation with NASA.”86 The experiments were jointly chosen in February 1978, offering a place on the payloads to more than 200 scientists from 65 universities and research institutes in 13 countries.

The funding procedures were very different. Funding was secured on ESA’s side by the policy of ensuring cost-to-completion for projects once they were accepted by the member states. Budgetary control was exercised by demanding that the cost for the development of the satellite, its launch, and its operation did not exceed 20 percent of the envelope estimated at Phase B (project definition phase). In short, once ISPM was accepted it was extremely likely that Europe would maintain funding to completion. On the US side Congress gave the go – ahead for the ISPM by including the satellite in the FY1979 budget. At this stage of development this was, of course no more than a statement of intent, not a commitment to complete. NASA’s appropriation is renegotiated annually in what is sometimes a bruising battle with the White House, the Senate, and the House. The agency is obviously never granted all the funds that it applies for, and sometimes has to make hard choices that can seriously impact the viability of some missions. In the United States, in other words, there is no guarantee that a project will be funded to completion when start-up funds are allocated to NASA. Budgetary control takes place annually.

The Europeans were aware of this. They hoped, though, that the interna­tional MoU detailing their respective obligations in the ISPM mission, while not having the force of a treaty, would bind NASA and the US administration tightly into the collaboration, and protect ISPM from the annual vagaries of the budget allocation process in Washington. This despite the clause in the MoU stipulating that the execution of the project was “subject to the availability of funds” by both partners. “Unfortunately,” as Bonnet and Manno put it, “the events which followed shattered this quiet conviction and initiated a new era in the relations between ESA and NASA.”87

NASA’s difficulties with this mission were created by the need to complete the Shuttle and by increasingly deep cuts to its space science budgets by suc­cessive administrations. The warnings were there when NASA was instructed by the Carter administration to slash its budget for FY1981 in advance of the elections. One measure that it took was to postpone the launch of ISPM by two years to 1985. This decision was discussed with the Europeans, who reluctantly accepted it. Once President Reagan entered office in 1982 the downward pressure on NASA’s budget increased further. David Stockman, the new director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was determined to reign in federal spending. NASA responded to his cuts by reducing its budget for space science by 30 percent. In doing so it eliminated its ISPM satellite without consulting ESA.

ESA’s director general and the director of the science program objected strongly. The cancellation of NASA’s spacecraft degraded the scientific objec­tives of the dual mission and eliminated about 80 European and American inves­tigators at a stroke. If ESA followed suit and cancelled its mission it stood to lose about $100 million. NASA stood firm. It would continue to provide the launch, a radioisotopic thermal generator that was on the payload, and the retrieval and dissemination of data from ESA’s satellite.

Faced with this situation, ESA officials came up with a new idea: that Dornier, the prime contractor on the European spacecraft, should produce a second unit for NASA at little additional cost to the agency. It would not be as sophisticated as the original American satellite but most of the scientific mission would be salvaged. In a desperate attempt to save the dual mission, the ESA executive visited Congress, the State Department, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Office of Management and Budget. Congress was sympathetic, and NASA was willing to reinstate the ISPM, but only if it was granted addi­tional money by the OMB. It had other international obligations—to Galileo (with West Germany) and to the Hubble Space Telescope (with ESA). It was not prepared to jeopardize either to save ISPM. NASA administrator James Beggs delivered the coup de grace in September 1982: he informed ESA director gen­eral Erik Quistgaard that the agency would not include any request for a second ISPM spacecraft in its new budget request. ESA decided to go it alone with one spacecraft, renamed Ulysses, whose launch was further delayed by four years by the Challenger accident in January 1986.

In their account of this unfortunate affair, Roger Bonnet and Vittorio Manno are uncompromising in their critique of the way NASA and the US administration handled matters, notably the failure to consult.8 8 NASA offi­cial Lynn Cline understands the frustration but noted that the European view doesn’t capture the full picture of what NASA faced on its side. As she put it,

We were going through our budget review between NASA and Office of Management and Budget. NASA was directed to take a large cut in its budget, and we were told that we weren’t allowed to take the cut in certain areas. So that left us with some science programs as the particular area that was under debate. So the question was, did we take a budget cut in Hubble Space Telescope, [that] was one of the options. That happened to be a cooperative project with the European Space Agency, and obviously, for our science community, a very prestigious, high – priority project. The second option was to take a cut in the Galileo mission, and I happened to be the German desk officer, so that was the one I was working on, [and I saw] all the reasons why we shouldn’t do that. And then the third option was to take the budget cut from the International Solar Polar Mission. All three of those were international missions, two with ESA, one with Germany.89

Why then was the ISPM cut? Cline explains:

One reason was that you could cut out one spacecraft and not terminate the entire mission. Secondly, NASA would still be able to provide the launch and all of the tracking capabilities, as well as its science instruments, for the one remaining spacecraft. So while we were losing a portion of the mission by eliminating one of the spacecraft and losing some of the flight opportunities for science instruments, that was less severe than lose a Hubble mission or lose a Galileo mission, and so that was the lesser of the evils, if you will.

Why did NASA not discuss this decision with the Europeans before it was made public? Why the failure to consult? Cline points out that this procedure was not of the agency’s choosing:

NASA went to the Office of Management and Budget and asked for permission to talk with Europe about this, and we were told by the administration that the bud­get was embargoed and we were not allowed to consult with the European Space Agency on this. So the first time we were able to directly address it with Europe was when it was broadly [. . .] public and a fait accompli, which obviously was not well received, and we went through all of the protests from Europe about not consulting and weren’t there other options and can we restore this, and a whole series of activities.

The legacy of the ISPM affair lives on in relationships between the United States and Europe, notwithstanding the fact that Ulysses mission was carried out, and, more generally, that this was an isolated, if unfortunate case, and did not in any way signify a retreat from a commitment to international cooperation. As Lynn Cline put it,

Now fast-forward to years later when I was lead negotiator for the Solar Terrestrial Physics Program, which was a NASA-ESA collaboration, at virtually every nego­tiating session I was treated to a lecture from the Europeans on how horrible we were as a partner, and new language they needed in the agreements to guarantee some greater protection for them on consultations and follow-through from the U. S., as a result of that experience. I heard about it again when I did Cassini, and I heard about it again when I did the International Space Station negotiations.

It has to be admitted that the United States handled the ISPM situation badly through lack of consultation, though even here NASA had its hands tied by the administration. More fundamentally, though, this kind of situation is always possible because the budget of the US space program is subject to annual review and cuts. The central lesson of the ISPM affair is that this procedure cannot be overridden by legal instruments like a memorandum of understanding, even at the international level. Hard choices are imposed by the funding regime under which NASA is obliged to operate and—as the ISPM affair illustrates—no inter­national partner can count on their collaborative project being immune to unex­pected budget cuts, or even to cancellation.