Reframing Strategy

On February 13, 2012, the FY 2013 budget was released. The president provided a budget of $17.71 billion, a slight decrease from the previous year. The plane­tary program was cut 20%, with Mars absorbing most of the decrease. The Mars Together effort with ESA ended. The NASA Administrator, at the rollout of the FY 2013 budget, emphasized that NASA was not walking away from Mars exploration missions. He explained that the issue was lack of money for another big science Mars program. “Flagships are expensive; … we just could not afford to do another one.”1 But Bolden and his new associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, who had come aboard in January, made it clear they were not abandoning Mars. However, they also were reframing the program. The way they did it reflected a different scientific and political strategy.

While Bolden and the 54-year-old Grunsfeld were both technically trained (Bolden in engineering, Grunsfeld in physics), what shaped their approach to space policy most distinctly was their astronaut backgrounds. Both had flown in space, with Grunsfeld’s prime experience being in repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. They both saw the divide between the human spaceflight and ro­botic cultures at NASA as hurtful and unnecessary. In speaking with Grunsfeld, Bolden charged him to bring the programs together in terms of Mars explora­tion. If he could do that—and it had been tried before and not succeeded—this would help the Mars program by giving it a dual purpose within NASA and also help Bolden sell it to the White House as enabling the president’s goal of human spaceflight to Mars in the 2030s.

It was not a strategy that Mars program managers at NASA particularly liked, and it was one that Mars scientists feared. But the two programs shared an inter­est in “life” questions—“life on” and “life to.” The environmental conditions on Mars which would make Martian life possible or present risks to human explorers had to be understood. Life research was the bridge between the two programs. Moreover, MSR required new technologies of descent and exit from Mars that astronauts would require. Bolden and the science director agreed on this strategy. Mars Together with ESA might be replaced with Mars Together within NASA.

Thus, in announcing the new FY 2013 budget on February 13, Bolden stated he had put Grunsfeld in charge of a cross-agency team to determine next steps in the Mars program. The team consisted of Grunsfeld; the associate admin­istrator for human spaceflight, Bill Gerstenmaier; the chief scientist, Waleed Abdalati; and the chief technologist, Mason Peck. What Bolden wanted, he said, was an “integrated strategy to ensure that the next steps for Mars exploration will support science as well as human exploration goals, and potentially take ad­vantage of the 2018-2020 exploration window.”2 Grunsfeld reinforced Bolden’s message by stating that Mars missions would track radiation as well as other issues relevant to human exploration.3 An “integrated strategy” was the new mantra for Mars. NASA would participate in modest ways in Europe’s ExoMars program, through certain instruments. But NASA’s prime goal would now be a U. S.-run mission in 2018 or 2020.

Bolden followed up with an op-ed in Space News. He emphasized his “new strategy that takes into account science objectives, human exploration goals and forward-looking developments in our space technology program.” He called for a “synergistic approach” and reminded the space community of his experi­ences. “As a former NASA astronaut who has flown four missions on the space shuttle, including the 1990 flight that deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, I’ve learned that scientific discovery and human exploration go hand-in-hand.” Without human repairs in space, Hubble would have failed to be the “amazing success” it has been. He declared that the “next step” in realizing NASA’s vision to explore the unknown was to unravel the questions of “life on Mars.” That could best be done, he vowed, by “coordinating NASA’s scientific and human exploration programs.”4 By putting Grunsfeld in charge, he was making science the driver in this endeavor. Whether this strategy would work remained to be seen. Grunsfeld embodied the unity of science and human spaceflight: he had flown five missions, three as a Hubble repairman, and he had been NASA chief scientist from 2003 to 2004.