PLUTO PROBE FACES BUDGET BATTLEGROUND By Leonard David Senior Space Writer WASHINGTON, D.C. -- There is a big debate brewing over a small world.
A full-court press is underway by scientists for Congress to find the money to send a probe to distant Pluto.
The Pluto mission has already taken a more convoluted path on the ground than it has trying to get to the faraway globe.
Skyrocketing costs
First, a little history is in order.
Last September, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued NASA a "stop-work" order on the effort to build the
Pluto-Kuiper Express (PKE) due to escalating costs -- the JPL-led project's price tag had skyrocketed to $650 million and indications were that the funding accelerator was stuck. It fell to Edward Weiler, NASA associate administrator for space science, to cut bait on the PKE project.
In its stead, Weiler instituted a program to seek proposals for a
Pluto-Kuiper Belt (PKB) mission. NASA announced an open competition in December, asking for new and lower-cost ways to get to Pluto no later than 2015.The space agency's door was wide open for new mission concepts, Weiler said, but spacecraft ideas had to meet a budget of $500 million in fiscal year 2000 dollars.
To kick start the process, NASA issued an Announcement of Opportunity, and multiple groups promptly went into scramble mode to hammer out PKB proposals.
Dead or alive?
Enter President Bush. The incumbent administration, in preparing NASA's new budget, advised the space agency to
quash Pluto mission development. That forced NASA to cancel the PKB Announcement of Opportunity.But Congress responded to the "kill Pluto" proposition by pushing NASA back into an open-arms position, telling the agency to
allow the PKB proposal process to move forward.Despite the confusing on-off switch NASA kept flipping, the agency received five new PKB proposals in April. However, since no formal funding is available, all NASA can do to bow to Congressional instructions is accept the proposals and start reviewing the ideas.
Deep breath before the atmosphere collapses
Even though there are no funds to actually build a winning proposal, Colleen Hartman, NASA's Outer Planets Program director, said that the agency was "very pleased" to receive the proposals.
"Although no funding for a Pluto mission is included in the president's Fiscal Year 2002 budget request, evaluation of proposals received...will be completed," she told SPACE.com.
"These proposals will provide a baseline from which NASA can measure progress in efforts to design an affordable Pluto mission," she said. "NASA continues to seek cost-effective alternatives to reach the outermost planet prior to 2020, when it is believed the planet's atmosphere might collapse."
With no greenbacks, color the Pluto project cancelled.
But the five new proposals can be construed as a breath of fresh air in lowering cost to reach the distant world, and scientists are sounding a battle cry to find the funds to turn paperwork into a true spacecraft.
Congressional gravity assist
"NASA should evaluate these alternatives before canceling the mission," said Larry Esposito, a space scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "Pluto is the only planet not yet visited by NASA."
"Pluto is a primitive object that preserves some of the early solar system. It is within our solar system's Kuiper Belt. Dust and objects in similar regions around other stars could be observed by Earth and space-based telescopes. The close-up images of Pluto provide a connection to the remote observations of other solar systems," Esposito said.
The best launch opportunity for the PKB is December 2004, making use of a Jupiter gravity assist, with flyby of Pluto in July 2014.
"After that, the opportunities are more costly and difficult. It would be a dozen years before Jupiter comes back into position," Esposito said.
One group taking the case for Pluto to Congress is the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS), which is stirring up its membership -- more than 1,200 scientists devoted to exploring the planets and other bodies -- to become active in having Congress reinstate Pluto funding.
The group has challenged the White House about its "arbitrary cancellation" of NASA-sponsored missions, stating in a special press release that the budget move was "done without consulting NASA's own scientific advisory committees or other independent science advisory groups."
Mars over Pluto? For heaven's sake!
"It's our hope, if NASA was given sufficient additional resources by Congress in the current budget process, that they might be in a position to reconsider a Pluto decision," said Mark Sykes, DPS chair, and a space scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Sykes said that nobody wants to steal money from one space science program to support another, but "at the same time, we have to be a little concerned that all the new monies -- as far as missions are concerned -- seemed to be funneled into the Mars program."
"Our solar system exploration program should be focused on more than just one planet or one object," Sykes said.
Ostensibly, the
funding boost given by the Bush administration to the Mars robotic program is where most of the Pluto money went."The Mars program should be augmented directly, instead of at the expense of other programs," Sykes said.
Sykes said that NASA has been dealt a tough situation, given under-spending in the past, several spacecraft failures, cost overruns in some key programs and now the new funding constraints outlined by President Bush.
"I understand that there are a lot of issues to be dealt with in space science," said Wesley Huntress, director of the Geophysical Laboratory at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "But I'm very disappointed that the Pluto mission is not in the budget. It's rapidly becoming a missed opportunity."
Huntress also said that solar system chauvinism -- focusing too much attention and money on Mars -- is a worry.
"I'm afraid that the program is pulling in its horns and concentrating on one small place in the solar system. I worry that the whole program is in danger of becoming one-dimensional."
Point of no return
"We have reached a critical point in time," said Alan Stern, director of the Southwest Research Institute's department of space studies in Boulder, Colorado. "PKB is not a budget buster."
"About 1 percent of NASA's budget over each of the next three years is what is needed to get to the launch pad," Stern, team leader on one of the five proposals now under evaluation by NASA, said. "We hope that Congress can see the value of this mission."
"This mission is not only excellent peer-reviewed science, it's what NASA is best at, which is exploration of a frontier. It also shows that we can get the cost of outer planet exploration down from an order of a billion dollars to half that cost."
"This is a breakthrough mission. For the first time, we explore the Kuiper Belt, and it's the first mission to the last known planet," Stern said.
The saga of getting a Pluto mission underway is one that has already left a long and winding trail, Stern said.
It is cancelled, it's back. NASA is behind it, Bush cancels it. Congress says "no way," proposals are still being accepted.
And now what?
"It has been an adventure story already. There are no bad guys in this drama. But it's time critical, and we've got to get it done now. I can promise you, Pluto won't let us down," Stern said.
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