The Future of Space Science

NASA's 2015 budget was unveiled earlier this week and, not surprisingly, the numbers weren't pretty. The proposed budget is 180 million less than for 2014, for a total of 17.5 billion. But only about 5 billion of this is NASA's science budget.  Large amounts of money are required for other NASA programs, specifically anything related to human spaceflight.  For example, development on the Orion capsule and rocket will cost 2.8 billion for the year, and commercial spacecraft development another 850 million.

However, in order to pay the bills associated with human spaceflight, NASA has resorted to gutting its other science programs.  For example, it plans to cut funding for SOFIA entirely. SOFIA is an infrared observatory that is mounted inside a Boeing 747.  The advantage of this telescope is that it can get above much of the interference/absorption from the atmosphere that ground-based telescopes suffer from while flying, but when it lands repairs or upgrades can be made, which is difficult (or usually impossible) on space telescopes.  This is also an international project, so NASA is letting their partner space agencies down in addition to the scientific community.  Of course I'm paraphrasing, but it sounds like NASA's official stance is that if the Germans want to use SOFIA, they can pay for it.

Jupiter's moon Europa

Of course there are science programs receiving funding.  James Webb Space Telescope got 645 million to keep it on track for a 2018 launch, and Planetary Science is getting 1.3 billion. However, most of that money goes toward Mars missions. While I acknowledge that NASA's Mars program has had numerous recent successes and yielded interesting results, there are many other interesting targets in the solar system that are being ignored as a result of this almost singular focus.  One example is a mission to Europa, considered by some to be the likeliest place in the solar system to find life other than earth.  This received only 15 million in funding - just enough for so-called "pre-formulation work"...it isn't even on NASA's long-term roadmap yet.

Plutonium pellet

There's also the question of powering a Europa orbiter, or any future deep-space mission for that matter. Because you receive less light from the sun the farther you get away from it, probes sent deep into the solar system can't rely on solar panels to generate their power. Instead, they use a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), sometimes called a nuclear battery.  These contain plutonium-238 (not the isotope that goes into nuclear bombs).  The plutonium heats up to over 1200° C, and that heat can be converted into electricity.  The Cassini mission to Saturn and New Horizons to the Kuiper Belt both use RTGs.  Both Voyager probes can attribute their long lives to the reliability of power from an RTG.  So, what's the problem?  NASA only has 36 pounds of plutonium-238 left (the previously mentioned Europa orbiter would require 47), and it hasn't been produced anywhere since the 1980s.  Due to lawmakers dragging their feet on restarting production, it's likely that all the plutonium-238 on the planet will have been used by the end of the decade.

While NASA's Orion project may provide future PR for the space program, it is enormously expensive.  If only a fraction of the 2.8 billion it will get next year (or the 3.1 billion it got this year) was diverted into restarting plutonium production, NASA could save its planetary science program. The same goes for the approximately 2 billion it would cost for asteroid redirection mission planned for 2025, which in essence "creates" a destination for Orion. However, it seems that even given the reality that NASA's budget isn't getting bigger, politicians and administrators continue to choose big, flashy missions that give good photo ops rather than the ones that can give the most science for the money.  Now stepping down from my soapbox...