Debating Priorities

Fisk and the SSB were able to elicit from Griffin and Congress approval to try to reach a consensus among space scientists which would provide guidance for policymakers in funding decisions.34 Thus, in March, an ad hoc group of two dozen senior scientists from various disciplines convened in a Washington, D. C., conference room to see if they could work together rather than as rivals in setting priorities. After hours of debate, the group found basic agreement on certain principles, such as the importance of smaller missions. What that meant for big missions, such as the MSL, was not clear.

The group did not identify specific trade-offs. The vice chairman of the SSB, George Paulikas, did not promise that the scientists could do that. Asked about how the scientists would spread pain among themselves, he told a reporter, “Stay tuned.”35 The ad hoc group would meet again to try to be more specific.

While NASA and the Mars scientific community fretted and argued about cuts to future opportunities, implementation of the existing Mars program con­tinued to go smoothly. On March 10, MRO successfully sailed into the correct orbit to take the next step in Mars exploration. Launched in April 2005, the $720 million spacecraft carried six state-of-the-art instruments, including ground – penetrating radar.

MRO’s goals were to provide new knowledge about surface features, recon­naissance for future landings, communications for future rovers and landers, and clues to life, past or present. In line with the scientific strategy, it would “follow the water.” It had flown 300 million miles by the time it swung into Mars orbit. Then it disappeared for a half hour, dropping out of radio contact. When it emerged, it signaled that all was well.

“Look at that!” yelled an engineer at JPL mission control. “Right on the money!” shouted another.36 McCuistion announced his delight with the way the mission was going. MRO would take over for Mars Global Surveyor, whose mission had extended far longer than expected. MRO, along with the European orbiter and two U. S. rovers, solidified the fact that spacefaring nations were cre­ating what JPL director Elachi called a “permanent [robotic] presence” around another planet.37

On March 29, McCuistion came to a meeting of the SSB to present a pos­sible Mars program that had been scaled back to fit into a $6oo-million-a-year expenditure stretching into the future. This was still the major program in the planetary sciences, he explained, but NASA simply could not do all that it had hoped to do. The agency was developing plans for the period extending from 2011 to 2016, and he wanted the board’s views as soon as possible. In 2011, a relatively small Scout mission would go up under the reoriented effort. In 2013, NASA proposed to send the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, which had been killed earlier. The next launch window would come 26 months later, falling in 2016. NASA was considering a successor to MSL called the Astrobiology Field Laboratory. This mission was aimed at finding evidence of life. If that mission did not work out, perhaps a repeat of Spirit and Opportunity, but with more sophisticated rovers, might be an option, he said.

Actually returning samples to look for life was not on the agenda at all, unless NASA could get other spacefaring nations to help finance such a mission. Mc – Cuistion tried to look on the positive side—$600 million a year was still a lot of money for one planet. But he could not contain his frustration: “Are we a little fragile?” he asked. “Yeah, we are a little fragile. But we still have a program that’s viable for the next decade.”38

In early May, the SSB again convened a group of leading scientists to help it determine priorities to recommend to NASA. Seventy attended, meeting at the University of Maryland at College Park. Speaking to the group, Griffin admitted, “I made a mistake. I made commitments in advance that I wasn’t able to keep.”39 The scientists divided into four groups. One was devoted to the planetary sciences. The cut in science funding had fallen heavily on the plan­etary scientists. This was in part due to the nature of the field. Missions were separable, whereas astronomy consisted chiefly of a few large telescope projects, one of which—the James Webb Space Telescope—was suffering a huge over­run destined to grow. Also, astronomers were relatively cohesive on priorities, whereas planetary scientists seldom united.

As the largest subgroup among the planetary scientists, the Mars research­ers especially needed to cohere around their preferences. The Mars scientists, however, were unable to agree on much. One mission with which they grappled was a small Scout mission scheduled for 2011. Should it go as planned or be modified, deferred, or cancelled? When the Mars scientists began to discuss the 2011 mission, six members of the group had to recuse themselves because they had proposals pending on this mission. “We can’t very well make a decision to cancel the Scout mission after all the qualified people have left the room,” said the chair of the group, Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washing­ton. “We’re going to punt. Our hands are tied by legal restrictions.”40

Legal restrictions were not the only issue. Many of the planetary scientists were fierce competitors. When all was said and done, they could not get beyond general guidelines. The SSB called the existing NASA program “fundamentally unstable [and] seriously unbalanced.”41 The balance to which the SSB referred primarily involved the ratio of big and small science. But critics of this view at the College Park meeting noted that many “big science” missions provided a substantial number of subcontracts to individual investigators and their gradu­ate students. Also, in the Earth observation field, many satellites were character­ized as “moderate” in size. Where did such a concept fit in the overall scheme of expenditures?

The effort to involve a larger body of scientists in setting science policy at NASA was of limited help to agency officials as they struggled to define what NASA would do in the future. The next scheduled mission, to go up in 2007, was a Scout mission called Phoenix. A stationary lander, Phoenix made use of concepts that were intended for the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander. Sensors that had been devised for that failed mission could be put to use with Phoenix. Its very name came from the mythical bird that died in a fire, only to be reborn from the ashes. Phoenix would arise from the ashes of MPL.