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Friday, January 22, 2016

Casey Dreier with The Planetary Society
made substantial contributions to this post.

In the children’s book, The Little
Prince, there is a delightful drawing of a boa constrictor that has a bulging
stomach because it swallowed an elephant.In the coming year, I believe that the key development for NASA’s
mission to Europa will be an agreement on how the agency plans to accommodate the
monetary bulge that will come from funding this mission.The results of the negotiations between the
agency’s managers, the President’s budget managers, and Congress likely will
determine when this and other new missions will fly in the coming decade.

(I had hoped to include the drawing from
the book, but it appears that the copyright is still in effect in the United
States and France.You can see it at this
webpage or a picture of a real constrictor after it swallowed a goat on this
page.)

Summary of the
planned Europa multi-flyby mission from a 2013 presentation.This chart is the only one I know of that
provides a cost estimate from an independent review.The official budget for the mission has yet
to be established and may differ from this estimate.Since this slide, the actual instrument
payload has been selected and Congress has mandated that the mission also carry
a Europa lander.

So why does the boa-elephant analogy
work for understanding the funding for the Europa mission?Think of NASA’s planetary science budget as a
hose – or snake if you prefer – that’s of relatively similar width from year to
year (except for the attempted 20% cut 2013, but that’s another story). Generally,
the overall amount of money available to fund all future and existing planetary
missions is relatively consistent over the near future.

But when you’re building a spacecraft,
your funding needs are not consistent year to year. Over the course of the
development, costs grow substantially, peak, and then tail off. In the first
years of developing a mission, spending is lower as much of the work is
designing and validating technology needed for the spacecraft.Spending rapidly increases as parts are
built, greater numbers of engineers and technicians are assigned the project, and
pieces are assembled and tested. Most projects actually peak in funding needs a
year or two before they launch, creating the equivalent of an elephant’s bulge
in a boa constrictor.Spending typically
drops before launch, finally reaching a low and steady pace that represents the
costs of operating the mission in flight.

Because the overall amount of funding
available for new missions is generally flat, NASA’s project managers carefully
stagger the development of new missions in order to prevent different projects
from peaking at the same time.

The actual and
planned spending for planetary missions in development this decade showing the
characteristic bulge in spending in the years leading up to launch (2016 for
the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid sample missions, was to have been 2016 for the InSight
Mars geophysical station, and 2020 for the Mars 2020 rover).As the development funding bulge for one
mission ramps down, the bulge for the next mission can ramp up without creating
the need for wide swings in the overall Planetary Science Division’s budget.Figures are from actual budgets through FY16
and are the projected funding from the FY16 budget proposal.

For the last several years, Congress and
NASA have sparred over when the Europa mission should be staggered in respect
to other missions. Supporters in Congress want to see the mission launch by
2022, and are willing to increase the overall funding available to Planetary
Science to help incorporate the Europa bulge. NASA has only committed to
sometime in the to the mid-to-late 2020s, and has shown little desire to
increase overall funding to planetary science. To efficiently develop the
Europa mission, the two will have to reach an agreement on a funding plan and
launch date.

If a Europa mission is to launch by 2022,
its funding peak will occur around the same time as the funding peak for the Mars
2020 rover, NASA’s other major planetary mission. NASA’s Mars 2020 rover and
Europa missions are both Flagship missions with an expected cost of around $2
billion.Congress, however, has stated
that the Europa mission must utilize the Space Launch System booster (cost
unknown) and include a lander that could add upwards of $700M to the mission’s total
cost.The net result is that Congress
has mandated two large simultaneous bulges be funded at once for the 2020 rover
and Europa mission.

Absent an increase in the budget for the
Planetary Science Division in the late 2010s, these large missions could crowd
out other, smaller missions.Both
Congress and the White House have shown interest in ramping up the low-cost
Discovery program over the next few years in an attempt to restore the cadence
destroyed by cuts earlier in the decade. There is also the next New Frontiers
mission, a medium-class planetary spacecraft that would launch by 2024.The funding bulges for these missions could
overlap those of the Mars 2020 and Europa missions, creating more competition
for funding.

To achieve everyone’s goals would
require an increase of funding for NASA’s Planetary Science Division significantly
above what the White House has proposed in recent years.

Jason Callahan
and Casey Dreier of The Planetary Soceity have estimated what future NASA
planetary budgets might look like if all the missions planned for development
in the next few years are budgeted.The
result is a substantial increase over the current planetary budget for Fiscal
Year 2016 of $1.63B.

First, some background. Unlike Congress,
which only appropriates money on an annual basis. Budgets proposed by the President’s
budget officers (in consultation with NASA’s managers) project out five years,
with the first year the actual request for the next year’s funding from
Congress and the subsequent years being notional, but indicative of the
agency’s planning. For NASA to issue the multi-year contracts needed to develop
a mission, there has to be a clear, long-term commitment from the agency that
is reflected in the official budget request. It is very rare for a spacecraft
to successfully come to fruition without appearing in the official President’s
budget.

We will soon see if there is agreement
for the Planetary Science budget to increase to accommodate this new mission.
The President’s FY2017 budget request will be released in early February, we
will see if it contains the larger proposed funding to include a Europa mission
launch in the early 2020s.

But if the overall budget of planetary
science doesn’t increase, there are several alternatives that the
Administration could pursue:

Delay the launch of the Europa mission to the
mid-2020’s to push out its spending bulge well after the Mars program needs

Delay the smaller Discovery and New Frontiers
missions and use that funding for Europa, which would result in an unbalanced
planetary program with just two Flagship missions launching in the next decade.
And this wouldn’t provide all the funding needed for the two Flagship missions.

Take the additional funding from elsewhere in
NASA’s budget (which would result in either hurting the human spaceflight
program that has strong political backing, or hurting one of NASA’s other
science program such as the Earth Science program (the latter of which has been
proposed by various members of Congress, but which I oppose – we are rapidly
modifying our planet and need satellites to identify and monitor the changes))

Any of these alternatives represent
solutions typical of those made in budget negotiations, which assume a flattish
overall budget with the individual line items being traded off.

I’m hoping that this year represents a
new possibility.The public has
repeatedly shown its interest in planetary exploration through its avid
following of missions in the press and the internet.Congress has noticed that interest and been
willing to support increases in the NASA’s planetary program for several years.Several key members of Congress also are
personally interested in planetary exploration specifically and space science
in general and have consistently added money for Europa over the past few
years. Congress has also consistently increased NASA’s budget since 2013, providing
a surprising (and welcome) 7% increase in 2016.

This seems to be the year to attempt to
create a political consensus for a new, higher spending rate for NASA’s
planetary program.The set of proposed
missions is compelling.Congress is
willing.For the next year, before the
next President changes the players with the resulting delay in dealing with new
policies, we have stable management teams in the President’s budget office and
at NASA.And public interest groups like
the Planetary Society have shown that they can demonstrate the public’s support
for increased funding and build the political case for the needed funding.

These budget issues aren’t unique to the
Europa mission.They occur with any large
mission as NASA’s budgets are planned.In a zero-sum game, something has to give.In recent years, though, Congress has shown
its willingness to increase the size of the budget to match the vision.Perhaps it will be possible to have a dream
line of up missions in development: Mars 2020, Europa, two or more Discovery
missions, and a New Frontiers mission.It’s worth working for.

Appendix: Estimated Europa mission costs

I have seen just one official cost
estimate for the Europa multi-flyby mission (previously called the Europa
Clipper) in a mission definition update.That estimate was for $2.1B without the launch (and was made by the
Aerospace Corporation, which NASA uses to provide independent mission cost
estimates).To estimate total spending
that must be done before a possible 2022 launch, we need to add in the possible
costs of the newly required Europa lander and the launch vehicle.We should also subtract the costs of post launch
operations (which seem to run $50M to $70M a year for Flagship missions) and
money already spent or appropriated through FY16.

Here’s what the budget swag looks like:

+$2.1BMulti-flyby spacecraft

+$0.5BSLS launch vehicle*

+$0.7BEuropa lander*

-$0.3BPost launch operations*

-$0.4BAlready spent/appropriated

This back of the envelope calculation
results in approximately $2.6B remaining spending before launch.If launch is in 2022, then that leaves six
years after FY2016, for an average spending rate of $440M per year.More likely, there will be a higher peak spending
rate for a couple of years with lower spending in the beginning and end of this
period (based on spending patterns of other missions).A possible average, though, is as far as I
can push this thought experiment.

*SLS cost estimate from another Europa
mission presentation; lander costs from a press account and may not be firm;
operations costs assume a five year prime mission at a swag of $60M per year.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

I plan to do several blog posts on the New Frontiers 4 selection, and the list of missions that can be proposed. For now, though, here's a brief summary of NASA's announcement plus the text of the announcement.

Big News: A mission to Titan/Enceladus has been added to the list of missions that scientists can propose:

This community announcement is an advance notice of NASA’s ScienceMission Directorate (SMD) plan to release a Draft Announcement ofOpportunity (AO) for New Frontiers Program mission investigations witha target release date of July 2016.

The New Frontiers Program conducts Principal Investigator (PI)-ledspace science investigations in SMD’s planetary programs under anot-to-exceed cost cap for the PI-Managed Mission Cost (PMMC). At theconclusion of Phase A concept studies, it is planned that one NewFrontiers investigation will be selected to continue into subsequentmission phases. There will be no Missions of Opportunity (MO)solicited as part of this AO. All MOs are now solicited through theStand Alone Mission of Opportunity Notice (SALMON) AO. New FrontiersProgram investigations must address NASA’s planetary scienceobjectives as described in 2014 NASA Strategic Plan and the 2014 NASAScience Plan. Both documents are now availableathttp://science.nasa.gov/about-us/science-strategy/.

Investigations are limited to the following mission themes (listedwithout priority):

Five themes are described in the Planetary Science Decadal Survey.The Ocean Worlds theme for this announcement is tentatively focused onthe search for signs of extant life and/or characterizing thepotential habitability of Titan or Enceladus. The draft AO willfully elucidate information on the mission themes.

PI-Managed Mission Cost (PMMC) for investigations are capped at aPhase A-D cost of $850M (FY 2015$) with exclusions as noted in thisannouncement. The now-standard 25% minimum reserve on Phases A-D willbe required within the PMMC. Operations costs (Phase E and F) are notincluded in the PMMC, but will be evaluated for reasonableness. Thisexclusion for operation costs will not apply to the development offlight or ground software, ground hardware, or testbed development orrefurbishment that occurs after launch. These activities will beconsidered deferred Phase C/D work and their costs will be includedunder the PMMC. Only costs related to spacecraft operations will beexcluded from the PMMC. Lower-cost investigations and cost-efficientoperations are encouraged.

Launch Vehicle costs and procurement will be the responsibility ofNASA. A standard launch performance capability will be defined andprovided as GFE and its cost will not be included in the PMMC. Thecost of mission specific and special launch services, such as forhigher performance launch vehicles or the use of nuclear materials,are the responsibility of the PI and must be included within the PMMC.Details of these costs are still under discussion.

The value of foreign contributions remains constrained as was done forthe recent Discovery Program AO. The total value of foreigncontributions may not exceed one-third of the PMMC, and the value offoreign contributions to the science payload may not exceed one-thirdof the total payload cost.

Investigations may propose the use Multi-Mission RadioisotopeThermoelectric Generators (MMRTG) and Radioisotope Heater Units(RHUs). Some of the costs for the use of these systems and materialswill be included in the PMMC as detailed below. These costs are notfinal and may change.

Up to three MMRTGs are available at the cost of $105M for one unit,$135M for two units, and $165M for three units. The cost for theunit(s) is included in the PMMC. In addition, the usage of MMRTG(s)requires delaying the LRD by at least one year to no earlier than 2025to allow for mission-specific funding to support provision of MMRTGs.43 RHUs are available as GFE, and the cost of the units is notincluded in the PMMC. However, the PMMC will include approximately$26M of costs associated with the use of RHUs.

In addition to the costs above, investigations using either MMRTGs orRHUs will also incur approximately $28M or $21M, respectively, incosts for special launch services against the PMMC.

NASA will provide incentives for technology infusion into NewFrontiers investigations. NASA is considering providing technologiesas Government-Furnished Equipment (GFE), including up to 43 RHUs andthe NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) ion propulsion system (twoflight model power processing units and two thrusters). NASA is alsoconsidering providing an increase to the PMMC cap for investigationsutilizing the Heat Shield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology(HEEET), a woven Thermal Protection System. In addition, NASA isconsidering limiting the risk assessment of certain technologies toonly their accommodation on the spacecraft and the missionenvironment.

This incentivized technology list is not complete, and decisions onthe specific technologies and the nature of their associatedincentives will be made before the release of a draft AO. ATechnology Workshop will be held in early 2016 to provide technologydevelopers a chance to provide detailed information to proposers. AllNASA-incentivized technologies will participate in this workshop, butother participants will be welcome as well.

New Frontiers Program investigations involving entry, descent, andlanding (EDL) into the atmosphere of a Solar System object (includingthe Earth) shall include an Engineering Science Activity, to be fundedoutside of the cost cap, to obtain diagnostic and technical data aboutvehicle performance and entry environments. Details of the goals andobjectives of this activity will be posted on the New FrontiersProgram Acquisition Website (http://newfrontiers.larc.nasa.gov/) inthe Program Library.

New Frontiers Program investigations may propose activities that havethe potential to broaden the scientific impact of investigations asoptional Science Enhancement Options (SEOs). SEOs include, but arenot limited to, guest investigator programs, general observerprograms, participating scientist programs, interdisciplinaryscientist programs, and archival data analysis programs. NASA isconsidering allowing New Frontiers Program investigations to alsopropose Technology Demonstration Opportunities (TDOs) to demonstratenew capabilities. TDOs and SEOs are funded outside of the PMMC capand may possibly not be selected even if the parent mission isselected for flight.

NASA will release a draft of the New Frontiers AO in the summer of2016. The draft AO will be based on the recent Discovery AO, as wellas the Standard PI-led Mission AO Template. NASA has begun itsregular assessment and revision of the Standard AO, and, once it iscomplete, the Draft New Frontiers AO will be written and provided forpublic comment. Proposers should read the Draft New Frontiers AOcarefully when it is released.

NASA has not approved the issuance of the New Frontiers AO and thisnotification does not obligate NASA to issue the AO and solicitproposals. Any costs incurred by prospective investigators inpreparing submissions in response to this notification or the plannedDraft New Frontiers AO are incurred completely at the submitter's ownrisk.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Spaceflight Now has an article on the interest of European Space Agency managers of making a major contribution to NASA's Europa mission. What the article lacks is a statement of whether or not there is sufficient mass margin in the mission to carry both the newly mandated NASA Europa lander and a European contribution. It's possible that NASA doesn't yet know since it has been examining the lander concept, at the request of Congress, for only a few months. If NASA concludes that there is mass for a European contribution, teams of scientists can propose concepts for the next ESA medium class mission selection. The competition will be tough with with other teams likely to propose a number of other compelling astrophysics and planetary mission concepts.

About Me

You can contact me at futureplanets1@gmail.com with any questions or comments.
I have followed planetary exploration since I opened my newspaper in 1976 and saw the first photo from the surface of Mars. The challenges of conceiving and designing planetary missions has always fascinated me. I don't have any formal tie to NASA or planetary exploration (although I use data from NASA's Earth science missions in my professional work as an ecologist).
Corrections and additions always welcome.