International robotic rivalry in space

More chances to partner
"We're certainly outnumbered at the moon," said Alan Stern, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. Still, that present-day situation pales given the space agency's peppering of inner and outer worlds with spacecraft.

Reviewing the number of nations doing or planning space science missions, Stern's outlook is positive. "I think it's good. The more countries studying the Earth and global change, the more countries involved in planetary or astrophysics, solar ... it's good for space science and for space exploration," he told SPACE.com.

"Sometimes it's cooperative, sometimes it is competitive ... but in terms of the science, whether it is cooperative or competitive, it is probably good," Stern said. "We see more and more chances to partner, not just with the Japanese and Europeans, and the individual European space programs, but the Indians ... and the Argentineans doing missions with them in Earth orbit to study our globe. I'm not threatened by any of this. I'm very keen on having a lot more partners," he said.

Stern warning
On the more down-to-Earth side of U.S. robotic space missions, however, there's a "Stern warning" concerning cost overruns and tight budgets.

"We need to increase our flight rates. We need to rev up our Earth science program. We need to get more out of the budget that we have," Stern advised, as well as rebalance the ratio of small to large missions. "A lot of the vigor is taken out of the program when you don't have enough small missions to match the large missions ... that it is all large missions."

"The pendulum swung a little too far on that. We need to start pushing that back," Stern said, spotlighting small Explorer missions and Discovery-class spacecraft.

Stern said that NASA has been throwing money away on unexpected cost overruns. "I need to change that behavior, because that's the best way to fund more missions."

The problem, Stern said, has been scientists and science teams that try to put too much in the missions, be it science experiments, technologies or techniques. "When you create a psychology that you always pay for the overruns, then people don't have to mind the store very closely. Overruns need to be rare ... not routine."

Big picture
But while NASA is rebalancing its robotic exploration agenda, is NASA losing its touch? Is the U.S. space agency likely to fall behind other nations in space?

"I don't think so," responded Mackwell of the Lunar and Planetary Institute. "We have a vibrant robotic space program with numerous mission opportunities ahead of us. In some ways NASA has done a lot of the easy stuff, and future missions are likely to be more challenging — and expensive — as the questions get tougher and more complex," he suggested.

In looking at the big picture, Mackwell pointed out that there are a scad of missions still at Mars, a very healthy Cassini spacecraft doing wonderful science at Saturn, spacecraft are on their respective ways to Mercury and Pluto, and missions under preparation for the moon, Mars and Jupiter.

"Compared to the number of active NASA missions out there, the number of spacecraft by other nations is more modest," Mackwell said. "Projections for future launches of planetary missions from other nations do not suggest that the rest of the world will overtake NASA in the near future."

So the prognosis for NASA advancing forward in this arena is good, Mackwell said, but not without issues to deal with.

In Mackwell's estimation, the challenges for NASA science include issues with Congress passing a reasonable budget for the space agency that will support both the human and robotic activities; potential taxation of the science budget to pay for shortfalls in human spaceflight and development of the Ares booster; questions about the space policy of a new president; and the escalation of robotic mission costs for both new missions and extended mission activities.

"Nonetheless, the new management of NASA's Science Mission Directorate has a vision and a will to have a healthy mission suite to diverse targets, and strong research and analysis lines to capitalize on the wealth of wondrous new data generated by these missions," Mackwell concluded.

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