NRC’s Decadal Survey

The budget flew in the face of scientific recommendations for the planetary pro­gram, especially Mars exploration. The NRC, on March 7, released its Decadal Survey for the planetary program. NRC made Mars the top priority among planetary scientists for the ensuing 10 years. It placed the Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C) at the pinnacle of its list of recommended large – scale missions. This would be the flagship for the planetary program in the period 2013-2022. MAX-C, as the first step of a multimission MSR campaign, would collect Martian samples that would be returned to Earth by spacecraft launched in the ensuing decade.32

This stretched-out sequence was a function of budget constraint. For the first time, the NRC used an independent analysis of costs in its planetary planning. The cost of MAX-C would be $3.5 billion. That was too high relative to other needs in the planetary program, it said. NRC recommended that NASA reduce the cost to $2.5 billion.

As a second priority, NRC listed an outer planets mission to Jupiter’s ice – covered moon Europa. However, this mission’s cost was even higher than that listed for MAX-C, at $4.7 billion. Steve Squyres, the chair of the NRC group, spoke of “sticker shock” and the realization of the scientists that expense might preclude any flagship missions, leaving room only for smaller projects.33

Commenting on the NRC Decadal Survey at the time of its rollout, Weiler was characteristically blunt: “If we’re going to do any more big missions, they’re going to be international. The days of $3 billion-$4 billion missions that we do on our own are gone.”34

Squyres called on the planetary science community—not only the Mars ad­vocates—to back the NRC report and lobby for its funding. Otherwise, there would be few flagships for years to come. James Green, the planetary director, called the Decadal Survey “a guiding light” for NASA as it maneuvered through the short-term political and economic perturbations influencing the program. However, in putting the guiding light into action, the bilateral relationship with ESA would have to be reconfigured, he said. The assumptions about what NASA could back were not likely to be realized under the recent Obama-budget projection.35

In late March, Green met with Fabio Favata, head of ESA’s Science Planning Office. His purpose was to begin rethinking the bilateral relationship. The exist­

ing plan called for ESA (with NASA’s help) to launch its ExoMars spacecraft in 2016. This was a combination orbiter-lander, with the orbiter critical to the 2018 mission as a communications system. The 2018 mission consisted of two rovers, one by ESA and one by NASA. The U. S. rover would be akin to the MAX-C, thus initiating MSR. There were different rovers because the two agencies had somewhat distinct requirements, requirements that included work for respec­tive nations and their industries. But now, NASA knew it could not afford an independent rover.36

On March 29, Weiler and his ESA counterpart, Southwood, met at JPL. Weiler told Southwood that NASA could not build its own rover and proposed that NASA and ESA combine their interests in a joint rover. Although rumors had circulated that the NASA rover might be cancelled, Southwood was initially “shocked” to hear it directly from Weiler. Southwood, who was soon to retire, saw the bilateral program, aimed at eventual MSR, as his most enduring legacy in leading science at ESA. Was this the breakup of a marriage? he wondered.

But then he thought about the “joint rover” as a solution to ESA’s own finan­cial problems. One rover, designed correctly, could incorporate both agencies’ needs. What was critical was to get agreement to the change from European nations whose stakes lay in having work for their respective companies and their employees on the joint machine. The same interests applied to the United States, which was also particularly mindful of keeping a Mars scientific group employed at JPL. One rover would presumably be less expensive than two sepa­rate rovers.37

NASA wanted MAX-C, or something close to it, and the combined rover might make it possible financially to have this machine. NASA would want to include a drill to obtain samples beneath the surface, as well as the ability to rove over a large area to enable soil samples to be cached. The samples would then await a future mission that would collect and return them to Earth. Only in this way—holding to its objectives in a combined rover—would the United States have anything resembling a MAX-C. To be sure, ESA wanted MSR as a long-term objective, but its original 2018 priorities had been somewhat different in terms of payload from those NASA favored.

Weiler and Southwood had a relation that went back years. They trusted one another. They went away from the meeting with a sense of progress in spite of the budget challenge.38 They established on April 6 a joint engineering working group to investigate how a single spacecraft might be configured.

Shortly thereafter, ESA issued a stop-work order to contractors working on its 2016 mission. For ESA, the two missions, ExoMars 2016 and ExoMars 2018, were mutually dependent and mutually approved in its decision-making pro­cess. With the ESA 2018 mission likely to be greatly changed, there was a need to determine its implications for 2016. ESA led the 2016 mission, with NASA contributing instruments and launch services. Who would lead the 2018 mission was to be determined, although the likelihood in April seemed to be NASA. The agency that led would presumably pay the bulk of the costs. In any event, the replanning process got under way immediately. Both agencies were intent on keeping the partnership going. They increasingly saw no alternative in view of budget trends in both political contexts.39