At some point in our lives, most of us have gazed up at the multitude of stars in the night sky and felt captivated by the possibility of exploring distant worlds. But have you ever thought about where you would explore if you had the chance? NASA recently gave planetary scientists the opportunity to ponder this question as they developed guidelines for the next ten years of robotic space exploration. Called the Decadal Survey for Planetary Science, the resulting “Visions and Voyages” document represents the consensus view of the hundreds of planetary scientists who participated. NASA attempts to follow these science-driven guidelines in assembling a portfolio of future missions to explore and study the solar system.
The top priority target for NASA’s next big mission? Two candidates surged to the top, earning equal scientific clout: A sample-collecting Mars rover and a flagship-class mission to Jupiter’s ocean-moon, Europa. At Mars, after securing precious samples of the Martian crust, the rover would await two subsequent missions to collect and return them to Earth for study in today and tomorrow’s most advanced laboratories. The goal: to determine whether life ever arose on the Red Planet. The Europa flagship mission would be the first to orbit an extraterrestrial moon and would use instruments such as ice-penetrating radar and an infrared mapping spectrometer to investigate the habitability of the icy shell and subsurface ocean. Judging by the spectacular results of the flagship Cassini mission to Saturn, we could expect nothing less than awe inspiring new vistas and scientific surprises galore. Furthermore, a dedicated Europa mission would pave the way for more advanced forays, such as landers with seismometers for measuring Europa-quakes or even a submersible rover to explore the vast under-ice ocean. Two visionary space missions, engineers and scientists ready to start work, and strong public support – a slam-dunk for NASA, right?
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Figure 1: Projected budget for NASA’s Planetary Science Division as a percentage of the overall NASA Science budget. Source: NASA
Things started to go wrong when the White House released its FY’13 budget early last year, in which NASA’s Planetary Science Division – the one responsible for those cool robotic missions – was handed a 21% funding cut. Many planetary scientists were taken aback by the severity and specificity of the cut in light of NASA’s relatively unchanged overall funding, and the string of recent high profile successes, such as the Mars Exploration Rovers, Cassini, and the Messenger mission to Mercury, to name but a few. With this new funding reality on the horizon, it became clear that NASA would not be able to follow the Decadal Survey recommendations and collect samples from Mars, and we certainly wouldn’t be exploring Europa any time soon. Delays and cuts of this kind propagate for years into the future, due to the long process of designing, building, and launching interplanetary spacecraft.
Just after the Curiosity rover made its harrowing descent into Gale crater last August, Congress seemed to take notice and added about $100M back into the proposed budgets, with the funds earmarked for future robotic Mars exploration. Europa would continue to wait patiently. Meanwhile, scientists and engineers were not waiting: they were busy reworking the Europa flagship mission concept, making difficult choices and streamlining the design to bring the cost down while protecting the most compelling science. The Europa Clipper fly-by mission concept was born. Coming in at about $2B, the Clipper mission could accomplish nearly all of the scientific goals of the Europa Flagship, at roughly half the cost.
What would it take to get Europa Clipper off the ground? We have the technology. Engineers and scientists are ready to start work. All that is missing is the funding for a “new start”, which would amount to a small fraction of NASA’s overall budget. Convincing Congress and the White House may not be easy, but we have to start somewhere. This is where you come in: If you have ever stared up into the vastness of space and wondered where you might go, this mission is for you. We need your help!
