COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. The road to Pluto is paved with political potholes. NASAs new budget does not include the necessary funds to send a spacecraft to that distant world, although the space agency has received five new proposals to dispatch the worlds first mission to Pluto by 2015.
Last December, NASA announced it was seeking proposals for a Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission. The space agency staged a competition, asking for new and lower-cost approaches to shoot for Pluto by 2015.
An Announcement of Opportunity was released by NASA calling for new mission concepts and capping the cost of the PKB mission in fiscal 2000 dollars at $500 million.
The idea of an open competition sparked numbers of groups to begin hammering out mission proposals to reach lonely Pluto the last planet in the solar system yet to fall under the sensor scrutiny of a spacecraft.
But the incoming Bush administration told NASA to quash any Pluto mission development, forcing them to cancel the PKB Announcement of Opportunity. A lack of funding in NASAs new fiscal year 2002 budget for any Pluto spacecraft forced the space agency to kill the effort.
However, the response from Congress was to move NASA back into an open-arms position and let the proposal process move forward.
Survival of the fittest
For NASA, if Congress appropriates funds for the PKB mission, the space agency can proceed with the funding of a winning submission, if such a proposal, or proposals, survive a review process.
NASA warned all prospective PKB mission bidders that the Bush administration did not support this course of action.
In a phone interview, Colleen Hartman, NASAs Outer Planets Program director at the space agencys headquarters in Washington, D.C. told SPACE.com that five new PKB proposals have been submitted for review.
"Were very pleased in receiving the five responses," Hartman said.
While no funding is available to support the PKB mission, "we will continue with what Congress told us to do, which is to accept the proposals and do evaluations," Hartman said.
"But any next steps will depend on whether we end up with a successful proposal, or several proposals, at the end of this process," Hartman said.
Wheres the money?
Even if one or two Pluto proposals prove workable, Congress will need to put monies into NASAs budget, targeting those funds to foot the bill on a mission go-ahead.
"It will take a couple of months to review the five proposals," Hartman said. The entries are each from different organizations, she said.
NASA has an independent evaluation process that has started to look at technical risk, budget, schedule and other elements within each of the five PKB submissions, Hartman said. "Its an intensive effort to evaluate each of the proposals. Its not a cursory look," she said.
"It takes a lot of work to evaluate them, but it also takes a lot of work to produce those proposals. Were very conscious of that," Hartman said.
A two-step process is planned for moving forward on the PKB mission opportunity. If there are any winners in the PKB mission competition, they would be funded to refine their proposals. However, that action will not be taken without Congress forking over the necessary money for Pluto mission development, Hartman said.
"We wont release the names of the proposers until we hear that we should," Hartman said.
advertisement
