Bolden and Augustine

On July 17, NASA’s new Administrator, Charles Bolden, was sworn in. A retired Marine Corps general and former astronaut, the 62-year-old Bolden was very much a Mars advocate. His orientation was human spaceflight, but his Mars interest and internationalist bent augured that there would be support at the top of NASA for what Weiler was trying to do. In his first address to NASA employees, Bolden declared that most NASA people wanted to go to Mars, but “there are a lot of ways to get there. The challenge for us in the next few months is to figure out the single most cost-efficient path to get there.”22

Early in September, the Augustine panel reported to Bolden and the White House on its preliminary findings.23 Its most striking comment was that NASA was on an “unsustainable trajectory.” There was too great a gap between what it was supposed to do and the money it had to do its job. The Augustine panel had been asked to concentrate on human spaceflight. But what it said about sustain­ability in this area had applicability to everything NASA did.

The panel was charged to come up with options for NASA and the presi­dent, and it did so. Two that fit within NASA’s existing budget profile it did not believe worth pursuing, since they kept the United States where it was, in low-Earth orbit. The three it believed were potentially viable for an exploration agency were “Mars First,” “Moon First,” and “Flexible Path.” All would require more money, $3 billion more than NASA currently had, to be added over the next few years, with annual cost-of-living increases each year subsequently. It emphasized that Mars was the “ultimate destination,” but there were too many uncertainties about risks to make it the first place to go for humans. “Moon First” represented the current pathway, which Obama had inherited from Bush. An alternative, “Flexible Path,” meant going to “free space” destinations, such as asteroids, Lagrange points (“special places in space of particular significance for scientific observatories and future space transportation infrastructure”24), and moons of Mars. In this option, the Moon base that was part of the Bush plan would be postponed, but not necessarily abandoned. The Flexible Path option was akin to the strategy many Mars advocates (such as Hubbard and the Planetary Society) proposed. They wanted to go to Mars as soon as possible and feared that the United States would get mired building a base on the Moon.

The Augustine panel did not explicitly recommend a choice between the Moon First and Flexible Path options, stating they were not mutually exclusive and both were relevant to Mars. But in subsequent congressional testimony and interviews, Augustine came across as favoring the Flexible Path. The Augustine panel noted that human and robotic spaceflight could be integrated well under the Flexible Path option. Thus, humans “could rendezvous with a Moon of Mars, then coordinate with or control robots on the Martian surface, taking ad­vantage of the relatively short communications times” this proximity provided. There were “a lot of exciting things one could do [via the Flexible Path] along the way to Mars,” Augustine told a House committee.25

In October, the Augustine panel produced its final report.26 There were no surprises. It provided much greater detail on all aspects of human spaceflight. However, its basic message was consistent with the interim document when it came to future exploration: Mars was the “ultimate destination,” and the most viable and desirable routes “worthy of a great nation” were Moon First and Flexible Path. The problem was that the current spending was far inadequate for either approach, again calling for an additional $3 billion by FY 2014, with cost-of-living raises each year afterward.

The report went to Bolden and the White House science advisor, John Hold – ren. What they would recommend to President Obama remained to be seen. What he would decide remained to be seen. What stood out for many observers was the panel’s emphasis on Mars as a destination for scientific and exploration purposes, as well as the call for using a “first among equals” strategy for NASA to achieve its goals with international partners.

The Augustine panel’s report seemed to strengthen Weiler’s hand as he worked to secure the future of the robotic Mars program. Weiler commented, “I think the trend [in Mars space policy] is more and more collaboration. .. we’re talking about getting extra value… out of a mission.”27 While the United States remained the dominant space power, there were many spacefaring nations ac­tive in the twenty-first century. The United States was talking with ESA about Mars, but there were additional alliance possibilities. Significantly, Russia was collaborating with China on a mission to Phobos, the Mars moon that had long been a goal of the Russians. They had hoped to launch in 2009, but—like the United States with MSL—found they had to delay to 2011.28 As it turned out, the Russian probe never made it out of Earth orbit and crashed in the ocean.29

Mars was the destination of choice for many nations, and most acknowledged the virtues of partnership. The robotic program was seen as important in its own right, as well as a prelude to human spaceflight. With all its problems, NASA looked ahead and charted its course for the Red Planet through the robotic program. On November 5, 2009, Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator, and Jean-Jaques Dordain, director general of the ESA, signed a potentially historic agreement to plan together a joint program. Henceforth, if this agreement were adopted and implemented, the United States and Europe would go to Mars in concert.30