Transatlantic Alliance—and Concerns

On June 29-30, Weiler and Southwood met in Plymouth, England. The choice of Plymouth was at Southwood’s insistence. He had met Weiler on his turf. In a joint venture, Southwood believed, there had to be reciprocity in every way possible.15 Weiler recalled that the two men “argued” for hours. They were trying to forge a “genuine partnership,” and that meant dividing costs fairly evenly over the course of a multimission program. Typically, joint programs were dominated by one agency, but because of both “mutual interest and mutual dependence,” they realized they had to construct a different model. The goal and costs of MSR required it.16

They agreed to create a joint initiative. The basic road map they worked out called for the two agencies to design missions for 2016, 2018, and 2020. Missions would include “landers and orbiters, conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical, and other high-priority investigations, and leading to the return of samples from Mars in the 2020s.” A NASA spokesman said that NASA and ESA would begin to develop the initiative. Southwood said he would not comment, pending conversations with ESA member states.17

Southwood did indeed have a problem. The key nations in ESA whose as­sent he had to have were the primary funders: Germany, France, and Italy. Italy was not happy. The head of the Italian Space Agency, Enrico Saggese, declared that while he supported NASA-ESA collaboration in principle, he saw negative implications for ExoMars, the next ESA Mars mission, scheduled for 2016. The ExoMars project he had heard being discussed by Weiler and Southwood did not look like the ExoMars project “we subscribed to, and frankly, I’m not sure my national industry has much to gain from it.”18

What bothered Italy was the report that Weiler and Southwood were dis­cussing a shift in a significant part of the mission to NASA. NASA would assume responsibility for launching ExoMars on an Atlas rocket and supply an orbiter to relay data to Earth. ESA would continue to provide the descent, reentry, and landing module; rover; and drilling system. Some planned items for ExoMars would be removed. This arrangement would let ESA keep the mission under the $1.7 billion limit member states had set in November 2008.19

Clearly, Southwood needed assent from Italy as well as other nations. Weiler did not have a body of 17 nations to please, but he did have his own agency, JPL, the White House, Congress, and the scientific community to bring aboard. Toward getting scientists’ support, Weiler met with the NRC decadal panel, which convened July 6 and 7. Weiler bluntly told the committee that because of the cuts Mars had absorbed in recent years, “we no longer have a viable Mars program.” He stated he was trying to rebuild the program financially by allying with the Europeans. He also warned the panel that it should be careful about what it recommended. Money was going to be extremely tight. If the scientists wanted to add new ventures, they should suggest existing items to delete.20

Weiler’s stark warning was reinforced by OMB’s Amy Kaminski, who also advised the group, “Don’t anticipate a lot of growth in the budget for science, particularly planetary science.” Where policymakers wanted help from those looking ahead in the Decadal Survey was on scientific priorities.21