Troubling Times in NASA R&A

UPDATE: NASA PSD Responds to the concerns raised by many within the Planetary Science Community!

I can still recall the shock and the dismay within the planetary science community when it was revealed in the President's request for 2013 that funding for Planetary Science in the US would fall by about $300 million, or about 20%. Certainly, those of us in the community foresaw declining mission selection rates. In particular, the Mars program was expected to be deferred by removing the money which was originally to be reinvested once MSL's funding profile dropped off. Additionally, horizons for the Discovery and New Frontiers programs have been pushed out significantly and there are no flagships in the works this decade aside from the still undefined Mars 2020 Mission.

Traditionally, the NASA Research and Analysis (R&A) program has filled in the gaps between missions, preventing the cyclic loss of talent and information that occurs between flight opportunities. This was seed capital used to foster the continued training of graduate students, postdocs, professors and soft money researchers as they looked deeper into already-acquired data. Thus, the program also did good work by enhancing the science return of missions past.

But with sequestration on the horizon, the PSD is forced to play conservatively and, correspondingly selection rates for R&A proposals have plummeted to the 10% level. Where before proposals ranked as low as good (3/5) might be chosen for funding, there are reports of rankings of very good to excellent (4.5/5) being denied. The effect of this change has been documented by the Planetary Science Institute's Mark V. Sykes and you can read the testimonials here. If we look at the "budget wedge" for planetary science presented at the 2011 LPSC conference we can get a better idea of one reason why selection rates have necessarily declined:

The 2011 Fiscal Planning Wedge for the Planetary Decadal Survey. The empty white space beneath the heavy black line was thought to be the space we were planning. We were wrong. The request for 2013 nearly follows the colored bars down to below $1.2 billion forcing either no new starts or heavy reductions. We're only now finding out what that number means. Sequestration forces additional cuts.

Meanwhile at Europa, The Plot Thickens

 Divide and Conquer!
A concept for cutting JEO into two pieces brings an Europan Mission back towards the realm of the possible!

VK over at futureplanets reports on two mission proposals to Europa that were delivered to the recent OPAG meeting. The upshot is that by taking a page from the Mars Exploration Program, the outer planets folks have found that they can divide and conquer to explore. By cutting up the science goals and objectives of the US part of EJSM (known as JEO) into two missions - an Europan Orbiter and a Fly-by vehicle - it is possible to reduce the cost of the total missions by over $700 million. More importantly, it divides the program into much more manageable chunks, each of which costs less than $2 billion.

LPSC Notebook: A Special Note on Risk Mitigation

In my experience, no federal agency is better at marketing and public relations than is NASA. They have to be. Unlike most of the other divisions of the government, NASA survives on its ability to inspire the nation and to involve them in the exciting work that it does. And while everyone can see the economic sense of keeping air travel safe, building roads and protecting the border, NASA is something of a luxury that a rich country can afford as an investment in its future. If people stop believing in what NASA is doing and supporting it, the agency will disappear or at least contract down to its directly justifiable parts.

How does such an organization deal with risk? Unfortunately, not very well. This is particularly true when it comes to human space flight. This has always been a risky business. Eight astronauts died in the lead-up to the moon landing, all on training missions. It was a different time, with higher stakes and these losses were accepted. The astronauts themselves were test pilots and it was widely known that they understood the risks and took them in stride.

But by the 1980s, I think the agency made a fundamental mistake by changing course and attempting to appeal to taxpayers on a more mundane level. The pre-Challenger posters are still up in some places around the country, describing a shuttle flight as "Going to work in space." Moving the bar like that means that when a fatality happens, it isn't just a tragedy, it is an outrage*.

Knowledge of that kind of a response means that space systems designed today are much more risk-averse than were systems designed back in the 1960s. In many ways that is a good thing, but it also adds enormously to the cost of these systems. There's a reason that repeating Apollo with a return to the moon is economically beyond the ability of NASA to complete within a decade, despite the fact that we have much more knowledge and much better technology than was available in 1961.

Conversations at the LPSC: Dr. Michael Bland

Dr. Michael Bland surveys the landscape
in this photograph taken in 2006 in Death Valley, CA by Catherine Neish.

Tonight we move a little bit away from the Decadal survey on Astronomy.fm 's Live from York U. While the topic still comes up in reference to EJSM/JEO I focused on speaking with Dr. Michael Bland about his work studying the icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn. Mike is a tectonics expert who looks at the geophysics and geomorphology of surface features to glean information about the interiors of these satellites. His specialty is the Jovian moon Ganymede, the largest of all satellites in our solar system and really a world in its own right with a diameter almost 400km larger than that of Mercury. Ganymede may not be the first body you think of when tectonic features come to mind. Certainly, the cracks formed on the surface by internal stresses are less dramatic than they are on Europa and less explosive than on Enceladus. But the terrain is more varied and perhaps less understood on this world.

Conversations at the LPSC: Dr. Ross Beyer

Dr. Ross Beyer has always been at home on the surface of a Planet. He's shown here at Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley, CA in this undated photo taken by Jason Barnes.

Kicking off our latest series of interviews on Astronomy.fm is the SETI Institute's own Dr. Ross Beyer. He and I briefly attended the University of Arizona together before he graduated with a PhD in Planetary Science way back in 2004. Since that time, Ross has been keeping busy with significant mission involvement including working with the HiRise camera on MRO, as well as on LRO and one of the most exciting missions of the upcoming decade: New Horizons to pluto. Because of this latitude of space mission experience, which cuts across NASA's boundaries, I felt that Ross would be an excellent subject with which to discuss the recently released planetary decadal survey. I had the chance to speak with him last Thursday, and I have to thank him and my editors Michelle Parsons and Michael over at AFM for getting this interview to air so quickly! Tonight you'll get the chance to listen in at 8PM EDT / Midnight UTC over at Astronomy.fm on the "Live at York U" radio show.

I do owe Ross an apology: we didn't get to speak much about his varied experience in Planetary Science, so I plan on asking him for a full and proper interview at a later conference!

Programming Note: Over the next four weeks, we'll be bringing you interviews with young planetary scientists on the Live at York U radio program. This series, "Conversations from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference" mirrors the "Conversations from the Division for Planetary Science" series that we conducted last year. Queued up after Ross are Washington University's Dr. Michael Bland on March 21, who will speak with us about Icy Satellites, University of South Florida's Dr. Matthew Pasek on March 28, a meteorite man and astrobiologist extraordinaire, and finally the NRC's Dr. Abigail Sheffer on April 4, who will chat with us about things you can do with a Planetary Science Degree that you might not have thought possible! These last two will be appearing LIVE on air, so if you have any questions for them, you can leave those in the comments below, and I'll be sure to ask.

"Conversations from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference" runs Mondays through April 4th on Astronomy.fm 8PM EDT for the first three interviews and moving to 9PM EDT starting in April.

Hope and a Call to Action: Planetary Decadal Survey Released

Steve Squyres (left) and Jim Green (right) answer questions Monday Night at LPSC following the unveiling of the Planetary Decadal survey. Image is a screen capture from the live feed recap (I attended in person).

I can remember when I first met Steve Squyres. It was way back in May of 2004 when I was unbelievably green and doing a two week internship on MER at the behest of my advisor, Peter Smith. I was in the microscopic imager room in Pasadena with Nicole Spanovich (now at JPL) and he stuck his head in to see what was happening. Nicole introduced us and I remember him saying hello to me. I don't remember what I said in return, but I do recall that before I could think of something clever to say, he was off again to the next instrument room.

LPSC Notebook: Trouble Ahead

An artist's conception of a submarine exploring the Europan Ocean is shown in this NASA-JPL illustration. Currently, I'm not even 30 and the chances that I will see pictures like this in my lifetime looks like they will decrease tomorrow once the planetary decadal survey is released.

Something's in the air here in the Woodlands, and it's not pleasant. I certainly got my week off to a bad start with some hotel snafus here at the 42nd LPSC that have seen me in a different room each night. I must also report that I'm a bit disappointed in the location. Basically, we're located at a pedestrian-unfriendly high-end strip mall, though I do understand that this location is cheaper and more accessible for many. Oh, and now this: leaked details of Steve Squyres' Planetary Decadal Survey as described by Space News.

LPSC 2011 Preview

My poster for this week's LPSC Conference. 

Come by for a chat on Tuesday Evening! 

Also, you can click here for a full-sized version with legible text!

In a few hours I will depart the snowy and windy hallows of Toronto for the warmth of Houston, TX and the annual LPSC Conference. This event is the premier meeting of the year for us Planetary Scientists involved with the study of the surfaces and atmospheres of terrestrial planets, in particular the Moon and Mars (DPS tends to skew more giant planet/satellites/extra-solar planets). This will be my first visit since my return to Canada, my first at the new Woodlands Waterway Marriott and my first since 2007. The last has been troubling me a little. I had a great run going with four straight years of attendance from 2004-2007, and as readers of my DPS Notebook entries from last year know, it was LPSC that settled the question of whether I had made the right decision to pursue a PhD in Planetary Science. But I've been away so long that I have to wonder whether the conference I return to today resembles the same gathering I last saw through the eyes of an ambitious grad student. A lot has changed in the interim with me. In the next week we'll see what has changed in the world of Martian Planetary Science.
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As with DPS, I will be keeping a notebook of what I see. In particular, look for a post following the long-awaited-with-baited-breath Planetary Decadal Survey (TM) presentation on Monday evening. If you can't wait for my post, fear not! The formal presentation by MER P.I. Steve Squyres, followed by a response by NASA PSD Director Jim Green will be webcast live and carried on NASA TV starting at 6:30PM EST.

I should note, however, that due to the oncoming rush of the MSL Participating Scientist Program with proposals due on March 21, I don't expect to be able to write as much as I did at DPS. Here's to hoping that the CSA likes my LOI!