Almost unnoticed, included in NASA’s 2021 tax funding section of the recently passed omnibus spending law, is a provision that appears to be releasing the upcoming Europa Clipper mission from the Space Launch System (SLS).
According to Space News, the mandate to launch the Europa Clipper mission in an SLS is only maintained if a delayed and expensive heavy-duty rocket is available and if concerns about hardware compatibility between the spacecraft and the launcher are resolved. . Otherwise, NASA is free to look for commercial alternatives to bring the Europe Clipper to the moon surrounded by Jupiter’s ice.
Europa Clipper is expected to orbit Jupiter and make several overflight maneuvers near Europe, an icy world that many scientists believe has a warm ocean beneath the ice sheet. Life can exist in that ocean, the confirmation of which would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of this or any other century.
The Europe Clipper that had the mandate to fly with an SLS to begin with was the result of an inadequate side of Congress ’budget policy. The spacecraft was defended by the former representative. John Culberson
John Abney Culberson Texas Republicans sound the post-2020 alarms The 2020 Democratic Party platform endorses Trump’s NASA lunar program Conclusion MORE (R-Texas), who at the time was the chairman of NASA-funded House Procurement Subcommittee. To gain support for Europa Clipper, Culberson added the SLS mandate, which garnered the support of the senator. Richard Shelby
Richard Craig Shelby: Republican election struggles intensify bipartisan group of senators: elections are over MORE (R-Wing.), Chairman of the Senate Credit Committee. Shelby State contains a number of aerospace contractors involved in the development of the SLS.
Ironically, Culberson lost his seat in 2018, in part because his opponent, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas), accused him of being more concerned about space missions than local issues, such as flooding. caused by Hurricane Harvey. Still, the Europa Clipper continued without its key champion in Congress.
As Ars Technica points out, the launch of Europa Clipper on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy saves the mission $ 1.5 billion. The advantage of using the SLS has been that it allows a direct path to Jupiter without the planetary overflight maneuvers that require time that previous missions to the outer planets have required. The Falcon Heavy alone would not be able to get the Europa Clipper into Jupiter space directly, although it could do so if equipped with a powerful Centaur stitch stage.
Both economics and physics to reach Europe change if the SpaceX spacecraft, currently under development in Boca Chica, Texas, will be available to launch Europa Clipper in the mid-2020s. The spacecraft is destined to meet the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk: Will Space Axiom provide a commercial space station replacement for NASA’s ISS? The world’s richest people added .8T to their combined wealth in 2020 Trump ends Obama’s 12-year career as the most admired man: Gallup MOREdreams of establishing Mars. But the massive reusable rocket would be available for other things, presumably including sending probes to outer planets.
Mass cost savings through the use of a commercial launcher for Europa Clipper creates other possibilities. The Europa Lander could be relocated. A mission to Saturn’s frozen world, Enceladus, can also be illuminated in green.
The SLS is the result of a Faustian negotiation between NASA and Congress in 2010. Congress was infuriated by the cancellation of the Bush-era constellation deep space exploration program. the Bush era. According to then-NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, NASA agreed to the SLS in exchange for Congress supporting the commercial crew program that recently came to fruition with the launch of astronauts on the International Space Station. (ISS) of a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The SLS has since been a major weight in American space ambitions. The SLS, which plans to launch the Artemis 1 unmanned mission around the moon, is currently stuck in a series of field-based tests. SLS is currently spending a large portion of the money allocated to NASA’s Artemis program. The first flight is scheduled for November 2021 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, SpaceX has been flying prototypes of the Starship, albeit only in the atmosphere and with occasionally explosive results. NASA is officially disdainful of the idea of replacing the SLS with the starship. However, a version of the massive SpaceX rocket is underway as a lunar scare for Artemis. It wouldn’t be a big leap to completely cut the SLS and go straight to the Starship, if it weren’t for Congress ’budget policy.
And that, as Shakespeare would say, is a problem.
Mark Whittington, who often writes about space and politics, has published a political study on space exploration entitled Why Is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. It is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, LA Times and Washington Post, among others.