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Significant cost overruns. Important deadlines will be missed. Problems of unprecedented complexity, and a generation’s worth of scientific progress will depend on solving them.
This is the current state of Mars sample return. It’s NASA’s ambitious but risky mission, and its budget is rapidly expanding. expensive work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. threat of cancellation Even from the parliamentarians.
But not that long ago, a pioneering infrared telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, painted the same dire picture. launched On Christmas Day 2021.
The largest space telescope in history has so far proven to be a win for NASA, both in terms of science and public relations. Senior project scientist Jane Rigby said in a speech that the telescope’s performance exceeded all expectations. meeting recently.
That first image was so highly anticipated that the White House scooped NASA’s announcement and dazzling view A day before the space agency shared its first galaxy, it discovered thousands of galaxies. batch of photos. Since then, thousands of researchers have applied for observation time.
“The world is rooting for this telescope to succeed,” Rigby told the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics.
However, in the years leading up to its release, the success and acclaim that Webb now enjoys was not guaranteed.
telescope cost twice as many As originally expected, it was released seven years later than originally planned. Some members of Congress at one point withdraw funding From the project. Also mentioned in Nature magazine at that time As the “telescope that ate astronomy.”
After a thorough evaluation of the project’s needs and deficiencies, NASA was able to turn around the troubled business. Proponents of Mars Sample Return hope the mission will follow a similar trajectory.
“A lot of great science will come from Mars sample return,” he said. Garth Illingworth, astronomer emeritus of Santa Cruz, USA, and former deputy director of the project that is now the James Webb Space Telescope. “But they have to think seriously about how they manage this.”
Last year was a crisis for Mars Sample Return, which aims to collect rocks from Mars’ Jezero Crater and return them to Earth for study.
In July, the U.S. Senate gave NASA an ultimatum. In the proposed budget: Present a plan to complete the mission within the $5.3 billion budget or risk cancellation.A heart-warming feeling independent review It was found in September that the chances of Mars Sample Return meeting the proposed 2028 launch date were “nearly zero” and there was no “reliable” way to accomplish the mission within the current budget. . NASA is expected to respond to the report this month.
These tubes store rock cores and regolith (broken rock and dust) samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance rover for NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign. The campaign aims to bring Martian debris back to Earth for detailed study.
(NASA / JPL-California Institute of Technology / MSSS)
The James Webb Space Telescope was further along in its development journey when it reached a similar crossroads in 2010. 6 years After construction started. Frustrated by the ballooning budget and postponed launch date, the U.S. House of Representatives did not include funding for the telescope in its budget bill, which would have killed the project had the Senate agreed.
Lawmakers condemned this in a statement. mission It said it was “billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management,” foreshadowing criticism that would come more than a decade later in the Mars Sample Return.
To prevent the cancellation, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) ordered an independent review of projects under construction in her state.
The Board determined that Mr. Webb’s problems stemmed from the following issues: “Horribly flawed.” original budget. The evaluators concluded that all the technical expertise required to complete this ambitious project was in place. However, it is virtually impossible to achieve this with the amount of money currently set aside.
Illingworth remembered that review when he read Mars Sample Return evaluationwhich provided similarly grim conclusions.
“Some of the words are very familiar,” he said with a laugh.
When Mikulski’s review was published in 2010, Illingworth was deputy director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (later to become the James Webb Space Telescope).
With its powerful infrared vision and extremely high spatial resolution, the James Webb Space Telescope will show never-before-seen details in a mosaic image of a group of galaxies known as the Stephen Quintet.
(Space Telescope Science Institute / NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO)
Although he was sympathetic to the challenges faced by managers of Mars sample returns, he was impressed by the hard-won lessons of the James Webb Space Telescope, especially the importance of creating realistic budgets from the beginning. He was clearly disappointed in how quickly it faded.
NASA’s missions are managed by very smart people with an established history of doing very difficult things. Why do something as mundane as budgeting keep tripping them up?
“The problem is that the models we use as cost estimates, and the very complex proprietary software models that try to understand this kind of thing, are all built on: happenedin the past tense. casey dreierDirector of Space Policy at the Planetary Society.
“By definition, when you’re trying something completely new, it’s very difficult to estimate in advance how much something unprecedented will cost,” Dryer says. “It happened with Apollo, it happened with the space shuttle, it happened with James Webb, and it’s happening now with Mars sample return.”
Mars Sample Return also presents some mission-specific challenges that Webb didn’t have to address. First, it’s happening at the same time as Artemis, NASA’s hugely expensive mission to return humans to the moon.
Expected to cost $93 billion by 2025, Artemis 27% increase Meanwhile, guaranteed funding for Mars Sample Returns is down 63% from last year’s spending.
While NASA’s ambitions have grown, funding from Congress has been adjusted to account for inflation. was essentially flat For decades. Therefore, there is little room for unexpected additions.
“We are tasking our space agency with the most ambitious space program since the Apollo era, but instead of an Apollo era budget. 1/3 of 1% of US spending It’s about working together,” Dreyer said. “If you stumble now, the wolves will come after you. And that’s what’s happening with Mars Sample Return.”
Not all ambitious scientific endeavors can survive the kind of scrutiny faced by returning samples. In the 1993 Congress cancel The U.S. Department of Energy’s underground particle accelerator, the Superconducting Super Collider, cited concerns about rising costs and financial mismanagement. The government had already spent $2 billion on the project and dug 14 miles of tunnels.
but in the same week Congress ended the super collider and agreed by a single vote to continue funding the International Space Station. The International Space Station was a similarly expensive project and was widely criticized for cost overruns. The ISS was launched in November 1998 and is still operating smoothly. (For now, NASA plans to intentionally crash the craft into the ocean in 2030.)
Just as Webb’s future was never seriously called into question after the 2010 cancellation threat, the space station’s future was never seriously threatened again after that painfully close vote.
JPL, the agency managing Mars sample return, has already paid the price for the mission’s early stumbles, laying off more than 600 employees and 40 contractors after NASA ordered spending cuts. ing.
But projects that survive this kind of calculation often emerge “stronger and more resilient,” Dreyer said. “They have to perform because they know the public is watching, NASA and Congress are watching.”
NASA is expected to reveal this month how it plans to proceed with Mars sample return. People familiar with the mission say they believe it can still happen and is still worth doing.
“Do I believe that NASA, JPL and everyone involved can execute the Mars sample return mission with the care and technical integrity required? Yes,” said a member of the mission’s independent review team. said Orlando Figueroa, director and former NASA commissioner. “Emperor of Mars”
“It’s going to require very difficult decisions and a certain level of commitment, including from Congress, NASA and the government. [and] As with James Webb, it’s a recognition of the importance of what this mission means for space science. ”
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