FLUG REVUE November 2002: NASAs Discovery programme seeks secrets of the Universe

NASA DISCOVERY PROGRAMME

By Matthias Gründer

CONTOUR

The recent launch of the latest Discovery spacecraft Contour (Comet Nuclear Tour) proved the exception in an otherwise successful programme: after the scientific objectives of the mission had earned it the attention of the media, the scientists and technicians involved suffered a bitter setback.

Shortly after take-off, the space probe was orbiting the Earth when it entered radio shadow and lost contact with the ground stations. During this section of the flight path the command to fire the rocket motor was supposed to be issued by the on-board computer, following which Contour would move onto the course that would take it to the comets. But the probe simply never reappeared on the screens, and despite frantic searching it has apparently disappeared for good, evidently destroyed during an engine explosion.

No doubt this was a heavy blow for everyone involved with the mission at the participating institutions. But the Discovery programme will survive this loss as its strength lies precisely in the fact that it entails launching a series of relatively inexpensive research vehicles in rapid succession, in pursuit of a wide range of objectives. For many years the countries pursuing space programmes had been building large, enormously complex and complicated, and hence extremely expensive, spacecraft, which took years to develop and build. When a satellite was lost due to technical problems before it could even begin its scientific work, all the efforts were proved in vain and the loss was irreplaceable.

Painful examples of such incidents abound, for example one could mention here the Russian Mars '96 space probe or its American counterpart, the Mars Climate Orbiter. The former crashed into the sea after take-off due to failure of the booster, while the latter was unable to start work as its designers had failed to agree during the development programme whether they should use the imperial or metric measurement system.

The former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin lost no time in drawing what lessons there were to be learned from such mishaps. A new scientific programme was needed, he concluded, one that could be implemented faster, cheaper and better. Today there are several such programmes covering a variety of scientific disciplines, and the one for the planetologists and astronomers was named Discovery.

Strict rules now apply as regards the planning of projects: NASA produces a statement of a scientific problem and asks the scientific community to propose resources and methods to research it. Once these have been accepted, a team of representatives from research establishments and industry is formed, led by a principal investigator, which determines the scientific mission and the instrumentation needed on the space probe.

During subsequent development and construction, stringent cost controls must be adhered to and no mission is allowed to cost more than $299 million, including launch costs, operation and subsequent data analysis. Elapsed time between project start and launch must not exceed 36 months, and every twelve months up to a maximum of 24 months a new spacecraft is to be sent on its way. A public relations campaign that provides full information to the public accompanies every stage of the project. The millions of visits to the Mars Pathfinder website that occurred as the tiny Rover Sojourner crept across the planet surface have almost assumed the proportions of a legend.

Despite initial scepticism about the feasibility of implementing such a programme in practice, a few intrepid scientists got to work and actually succeeded in releasing creative skills previously unknown in the competition for the best ideas for the new missions. Sojourner is one example, while the pin-point accuracy with which Near landed on the Eros asteroid won the scientists great acclaim. Only a few years earlier the mere suggestion of allowing space probes to ply their way through the universe collecting dust samples of stars and comets with the aid of sophisticated technologies and then bringing them back to the Earth would have been greeted with laughter. Since Startdust and Genesys, scepticism has given way to admiration, and now it seems nothing is impossible any more – as long as the scientists keep to the prescribed time and financial constraints.

In November 2000 NASA published its new science programme, the Space Science Enterprise Strategic Plan, whose main objectives lie in researching the origins and development of the universe, the origins of life and the question of whether the human race is alone in the universe. A superb, showcase plan, which is now being pursued down many fast, low-cost avenues and in which large sections of the public have an active interest. This is producing new ideas, but another plus is the fact that young scientists are being won over early on, something which NASA's European colleagues can only watch with envy.

Moreover, the scientific idea which lay behind the Contour comet probe appears not to have been lost. Of course the $159 million of costs to date have had to be written off, but the prospects for building a Contour 2 are good – even if only the instruments are to be redesigned, so as to ensure that mission costs are capped at $97 million - Discovery is making this possible!

From page 44 of FLUG REVUE 11/2002

Last updated 1 October 2002

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