One of its goals was to use a laser altimeter to measure the tidal flexing of Europa's surface to settle the question of whether it really does have a subsurface liquid-water ocean, even if the surface ice layer is too thick for the planned radar sounder to penetrate -- but Galileo's confirmation early this year that Europa has an "induced" magnetic field created by the interaction of Jupiter's field with a highly conductive layer around the moon has probably already proven that.

More emphasis may now be placed on having the Orbiter try to analyze the other colored substances mixed with the ice -- which may tell us more about Europa's chemical suitability for life.

Alan Stern also pointed our that a 2004 Pluto probe, during its gravity-assist flyby of Jupiter, would fly just within Europa's orbit -- allowing the probe to make an optional close flyby of Europa itself, and use its near-IR spectrometer for analyzing Pluto's surface composition to also map Europa's surface composition in new detail.)

More emphasis will also be placed now on the Orbiter's role in trying to pick the best possible landing sites for future Europa landers --areas in which the radar sounder and other instruments indicate that liquid water is closest to the surface (or has been in the past).

The main problem, though, was how to reduce the current $600 million cost of the Pluto-Kuiper Express, which is almost certainly unacceptable.

In August I wrote in "SpaceDaily" that one way to do this -- since a Pluto probe really needs no new engineering technologies -- would be to modify an existing spacecraft design (such as the lightweight Stardust or CONTOUR comet probes) to carry out the mission.

Not only was it confirmed at the SSES meeting that use of an existing spacecraft design is indeed one of the most likely Pluto cost-reduction techniques, but Ben Clark and Al Hertzl of Lockheed Martin described the company's own 2004 Pluto mission proposal, which turned out to be very similar to my own proposal to modify Stardust for the purpose.

Their plan involves replacing Stardust's solar panels with a nuclear RTG (mounted where the comet sample-return capsule was originally placed), fastening a 3.3-meter high-gain antenna dish to the craft's side, modifying its avionics so that it can spend much of its cruise in "hibernation mode", and launching it in 2004 on an 8-year trip to Pluto. Launch by an Atlas 5 or Delta 4 would be preferable, to cope with any mass increases during the craft's development -- but Clark and Hertzl said that in a pinch a smaller Atlas 3 could probably launch it.

They indicated that such a mission would cost more then I had estimated, but that it was still cheaper than any other possible Pluto probe design -- and that it could be financed under the new $150 million per year limit on the Outer Planets Program.

There was some skepticism about this at the meeting; but there was general agreement that the best way to reduce Pluto Express' cost is to take it out of sole control by JPL and have it instead designed and built by a private company -- perhaps selected by a hasty competitive bidding process, which would have to be completed within the first few months of 2001 to launch the mission in 2004.

Indeed, that was one part of the official conclusions reached by the SSES as a result of its two-day meeting:

(1) The importance of launching the Pluto Express in 2004, before the Europa Orbiter, was reemphasized, in order to maximize the Outer Planets Program's total scientific bang for the buck;

(2) NASA was urged to raise the OP Program's funding back to its former $250 million per year level (or at least above its current $150 million); and

(3) The committee recommended that both the Pluto and Europa spacecraft should be designed and built by private companies (preferably after a process of competitive bidding) rather than leaving them as a monopoly for JPL.

All these decisions were firm and vehement; there was almost no dissent against any of them. They were, indeed, simply reaffirmations of what SSES had said from the beginning. But what was NASA management's reaction?

At the start of the meeting, Ed Weiler told the committee that a new committee led by engineer Earle Huckins was also considering what changes must be made in the OP Program -- and that, if JPL could not find a way to radically decrease the cost of both missions by Thanksgiving, they would be taken away from the Laboratory and turned over to competitive bidding. He also said that NASA would reach a firm decision on the overall form of the Outer Planets Program by Jan. 1.

NASA says that it wants to keep the Outer Planets Program in one piece as a continuing Congressionally-funded line item in NASA's budget -- like the Mars Surveyor, Discovery and Explorer programs -- because this gives it more flexibility in planning and modifying the program.

But Ed Weiler also insisted at the meeting that the White House says flatly that the only reason it supports continuing line-item status for the Outer Planets Program is to allow launch of the Europa Orbiter -- which, as I noted, it may have been secretly persuaded to do by NASA's top management itself.

And since OP missions are considerably more expensive and less frequent than missions in those other three programs, there was speculation that the Program may be about to break down again into separate missions, each of which must be individually approved by Congress.

In any case, a source told TerraDaily that immediately after the meeting, Ed Weiler confirmed once again that NASA has firmly decided to ignore its own main scientific advisory group's recommendations, that a 2004 Pluto mission is completely out of the question, and that the Huckins group's mandate is limited to finding the most cost-effective ways to get the Europa Orbiter off the ground in 2006 followed by another Outer Planets mission around 2010, and in all likelihood this would be a Pluto Kuiper.

There was speculation at the meeting that the next Presidential administration -- whoever ends up running it -- may change NASA's planetary exploration policies. So the whole question of a 2004 Pluto mission remains up in the air, despite the wishes of NASA's scientific advisors -- and may well not be decided until about next March.

Back to Part One of this Report

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SPACE SCIENCE

Voyages To Outer Sol
Cameron Park - Nov. 15, 2000
NASA's outer planets program may soon see a radical change in mission selection and development processes that could include more private partipation writes Bruce Moomaw in part two of his ongoing planetary exploration series.

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