Mars Observer Troubles

Mars Observer was still on target for 1992. However, it was not exactly un­troubled. Its budget was mounting from the $250 million slated for the first in a series of low-cost “planetary observers” its original architects had planned.33 The administration and Congress had approved only one Observer, not a pro­gram of closely coupled missions, and this initial “low-cost” venture was up to at least $450 million in cost in 1988, not counting launch expenses. The problems causing growth were many, but the basic reason for the cost overrun was that Observer was increasingly vital to all stakeholders: NASA, JPL, scientists, the industrial contractors, administration, Congress, and even the Soviet Union.

Seeing Observer as the first U. S. Mars spacecraft in the years since Viking, Mars scientists were desperate to get their experiments on the machine. NASA, JPL, and their political masters did not want it to fail, especially now that it embraced foreign policy purposes. NASA sought to reduce risk through various technological safeguards. Virtually all involved agreed that the delay from I990 to I992 made it all the more essential that the scientific payoff be substantial. Moreover, the use of a shuttle added to the pressures to make the mission wor­thy of the huge launch cost.

Indicative of how costs could rise was a decision in 1986 by Edelson. He had personally ordered that a sophisticated new camera developed by Michael Malin, then at JPL, be put on Observer. He thereby overruled Malin’s JPL superior, who had tried to keep it off. “I’m not going to approve of any mission to Mars, or any planet that doesn’t have a camera aboard,” Edelson had de­clared.34 The decision had merit, but so did other decisions that added expense. Briggs, as NASA official responsible for the flight at headquarters, tried hard to keep costs down, struggling with a host of stakeholders for whom technical suc­cess loomed largest in values. He did not succeed. Many headquarters officials shared the performance-oriented values of those doing the work at JPL.35 Thus, formally and informally, the mission was redefined and grew in instruments and complexity over time.

The rising expense became so much an issue that Briggs in May 1988 asked the Space Science Board’s Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX) what instruments might be taken off Mars Observer. The com­mittee refused to say, declaring,

For whatever reasons, Mars Observer has now outgrown all the original Observer class parameters. Moreover, it is clear from the recently promulgated OSSA strategic plan that with the failure to establish a true Observer line, MO almost surely represents the only mission to Mars by this nation in the coming decades. COMPLEX therefore takes the position that in these circumstances MO cannot be judged by the criteria for science return that would apply to Observer-class missions as initially conceived by the Solar System Exploration Committee. Consequently, the potential surrender of any current mission capability that substantially addresses the primary science objectives established for the exploration of Mars is a matter of great concern to the committee.36

On July 19, Fisk went to JPL and met with Allen, the director of the facil­ity. They agreed, via a “handshake,” to descope the mission, removing certain instruments. At the same time, they concurred that NASA would add the Mars balloon relay, with funding from outside the Mars Observer project, to enable possible U. S.-USSR collaboration.37