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An Enterprise Mission Inaugural White Paper
The New Frontier of Hope: the Change that NASA Needs
By Richard C. Hoagland
At this writing, we have just witnessed the historic Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States -- and the first African-American, Barack Obama. Intensely anticipated by the Nation and the world, since his "improbable journey" culminated in his successful election to the Presidency on November 4th -- in major part, because of "the promise of sweeping Change" on which Obama consistently campaigned for almost two years previously -- in no Federal agency is that promise more urgently required, and now (because of remarkable events which happened just last week in Washington ...) to be virtually certain to be fulfilled-- Than NASA. Before those "game changing" events occurred, however, in the traditional process of Transition -- termed "the smoothest ever" by both in-coming Obama and out-going Bush participants -- the one highly controversial exception to that characterization occurred over efforts by the Obama Transition Team to determine what its future options are in NASA. That's when and where "it hit the fan." Outgoing NASA Administrator, Dr. Michael Griffin, when questioned by the Obama Team regarding NASA's now premiere project -- President Bush's legacy of a planned Return to the Moon and On to Mars, "Project Constellation" -- publicly characterized the head of the Obama Space Policy Transition, Lori Garver, as "not qualified" to ask the questions .... When Garver protested to Griffin "... we are just trying to look under the hood,” Griffin reportedly shot back: "If you are looking under the hood, then you are calling me a liar. Because it means you don’t trust what I say is under the hood ...." Our analysis here differs from most mainstream accounts of this remarkable incident; we believe that Griffin's highly public aversion to the incoming Obama Administration has far more to do with "other" information Griffin is withholding, far more than just Project Constellation. In fact, we wrote (in association with Mike Bara) an entire New York Times bestseller -- "Dark Mission: the Secret History of NASA" -- documenting just what Griffin could be attempting to keep hidden ... and "why." Including, what he really knows about what's waiting for the next NASA mission ... when it arrives on Mars.
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Last May, I was privileged to be invited to address the Libertarian National Nominating Convention for President of the United States, coincidentally, the same weekend NASA intended to land another unmanned spacecraft on the planet Mars. Minutes after landing, it then became my honor to announce to the delegates the successful touchdown of the newest NASA spacecraft on the Martian surface -- this time, in the heretofore unexplored northern polar regions. Thus began, May 25, 2008 the NASA Phoenix Mission -- the latest search for "past or current conditions suitable for Life on Mars." That same night I also ventured an important political prediction to the delegates: That the Bush Administration, either before the (then) upcoming 2008 election, or before its "watch" was over on January 20, 2009, would likely reveal "robust new evidence, strongly indicating past -- or current -- biological activity on Mars." Now, flash forward the film .... Thursday afternoon, January 15, 2009 -- less than a week before President George W. Bush hands over the reigns of government (and NASA) to President-elect Barack Obama -- against the expressed wishes of the Obama Transition Team, outgoing NASA Administrator and President Bush appointee, Dr. Michael Griffin, authorizes a sudden "major Mars announcement" out of NASA Headquarters-- Which NASA-Goddard senior planetary scientist and director of the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, Dr. Michael Mumma, along with several other colleagues on his team, then delivers-- Outlining a remarkable, ten-year NASA scientific program Mumma has been quietly leading since 1999, to investigate "anomalously high, and seasonally changing, methane levels in the Martian atmosphere ..." -- a gas totally unexpected to be found on Mars (according to all present scientific models), but which on Earth is primarily (~95%) produced by life. Citing over a decade of increasingly definitive telescopic and spacecraft observations, Mumma reported that the convergent methane readings now "... could be [the result of] biology that's going on either very near the surface or deep below the permafrost layer." Lisa Pratt, a geologist with Indiana University and another member of the January 15th NASA briefing, added "... it’s such an exciting discovery. We have evidence [in the methane plumes] we need to think about [now] in terms of the possibility of life on Mars [emphasis added].” One of the additional, fascinating questions regarding the appearance of these "mysterious methane plumes" -- which are producing methane at a rate equal to major subterranean methane-emitting regions here on Earth! -- is not only their origins ... but how rapidly Mumma found they're also seasonally disappearing. The quoted "lifetime" of ejected methane in Mars' atmosphere is "between 300 and 350 years ..." -- calculated as the rate at which the molecule (composed of four hydrogen atoms arrayed around one carbon atom) will be destroyed (broken apart), once appearing in the Martian atmosphere, by interaction (called "photolysis") with ultraviolet light coming from the sun. Mumma's perplexing additional observation -- that the massive plumes also seem to only have lifetimes of "about one Earth year," which is a destruction rate ~300 times faster than any solar-driven Martian mechanism -- opens up other, fascinating possibilities; one of these is that peroxide-covered Martian dust, raised high in the atmosphere through the frequent Martian duststorms, is chemically oxidizing the new methane -- causing it to rapidly, chemically break apart ... and thus disappear from Mumma's telescopic observations. The other, even more fascinating possibility, is that the methane's mysterious disappearance -- like its currently equally mysterious appearance -- also has a Martian biological explanation .... This intriguing speculation was actually discussed at NASA, in that January afternoon meeting, by Lisa Pratt; that the methane -- in addition to potentially having a biological origin (from underground, methane-emitting microorganisms) -- could also be a acting as an abundant "hydrocarbon-rich food source" for other Martian life forms!; in other words, one simple reason the Martian methane was disappearing far too soon (according to the previous calculations ...) was that it was simply-- Being eaten! Or, as Pratt described it at the briefing-- "The fact that [we know methane] is now expressed in significant quantities at the surface allows us to say, it's much easier to make a living consuming methane than to try to make a living of producing methane by carbonate reduction," said Pratt. "If there is methane coming out in focused areas [the plumes], and there is life [on Mars capable of eating it], then the life should be where the resource is. This gives us a bull's eye to go after it [with future Mars surface missions] ...." Announced almost on the eve of the Inauguration of Barack Obama -- "the Change President" -- this was by far the most definitive scientific statement in favor of either past (or current!) Martian life that NASA has ever officially presented ... a definite harbinger of "change" ... but-- Ennunciated under the Bush Adminstration-- Exactly as predicted ....
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The basis of our prediction, of course, stemmed from our carefully researched details regarding the space program covered in "Dark Mission"; among these details, the decades-long trend curve of NASA's entire unmanned Martian exploration program and increasingly surprising (at least to mainstream planetary scientists ...) "habitable picture" each successive mission has now unexpectedly produced; each new NASA news release, each new revelation -- from the bafflingly "positive results" of the original Viking life experiments in 1976, to the "ancient shallow seas" of the amazing Martian rovers in 2004, to the latest discovery of "soil suitable for growing asparagus" at Phoenix' polar landing site in 2008 -- building on previous Martian revelations ... each discovery contributing smoothly, one mission at a time, towards what most observers now fully expect as the "ultimate" NASA declaration: Mars, indeed, has Life! Griffin's suddenly authorized "Mars methane announcement" represents a giant NASA step in that direction -- following the slow but steady "drip ... drip ... drip" of all its previous decades of announcements, the equivalent, as we have said elsewhere, of "time-release Mars aspirin"; however, this time, the final verdict -- "is the anomalous methane found by Mumma and his team derived from simple Martian geochemistry, or is it actual biology?" -- is almost within reach, awaiting only one more NASA mission (of course ...)-- "Mars Science laboratory." Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), currently being built by NASA's Jet propulsion laboratory (JPL) in California, is to be the most advanced unmanned NASA mission ever sent to Mars: a massive (1-ton), nuclear-powered, Volkswagon-sized rover, loaded with more than ten times the weight of scientific sensing and analysis equipment aboard the current Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, capable of roving literally hundreds of miles over an extended mission .... It will fall to MSL (finally ...) to tell the world if Mars "truly is alive" .... Among this rover's complement of incredibly sophisticated scientific instruments, is a highly sensitive "tunable laser spectrometer" (a device to record the spectral "fingerprints" of surface elements and atmospheric constituents found on Mars). With this new planetary instrument, MSL will conduct the first on-site analysis of the "isotopic composition" of the methane that Mumma and his colleagues have now definitively detected from afar ... from Earth. It is on that key "isotopic signature" -- is the carbon in the Martian methane predominately composed of carbon-12, preferred on Earth by living systems, or is it the "inorganic" form (carbon-13), which is not -- that NASA biologists (and other scientists around the world ...) will base their assessment re the likelihood of an ultimately biological origin for Mumma's "methane plumes".... Unfortunately, for those among us short of patience after this long build-up, this now-crucial Mars Science Laboratory Mission was abruptly delayed by Mike Griffin just a few weeks ago ... for two more years ... past the originally planned departure date in late 2009. This unfortunate delay (and the additional costs that will now ensue because of it -- an estimated $400 million dollars!) is occasioned by the vital need for additional time to solve major engineering problems that have cropped up with building and testing this most advanced unmanned spacecraft ever sent to Mars. The reason the delay will stretch for two more (quite expensive) years, is simply because of the "implacable laws" of celestial mechanics -- which prevent a spacecraft from even being launched toward Mars if it is post-poned past a narrow "launch window" of only a few weeks duration, while Earth and Mars remain approximately aligned in their orbits of the Sun. 2011 is thus the next practical "celestial opening" for MSL to Mars ....
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This, of course, was the primary reason for Griffin to ignore his last-minute political opposition, and to go ahead with "placing a marker on the trail" on January 15th ... to remind everyone (when the current speculation re Martian biology is eventually proven -- one way or the other ...), that it was the "Bush NASA" -- headed by a "Bush appointee," Michael Griffin -- which funded, and then made a "big deal" about this seminal and foreshadowing Martian revolution ... before the next Administration .... Because, based on the information documented in "Dark Mission," we now believe that Griffin already knows the crucial answer to the "methane question" ... and was forced to prematurely "jump the gun" on what was to be a carefully-timed release of this definitive scientific information to all the rest of us within the next few years -- because of Barack Obama's imminent, but totally unexpected, elevation to the Oval Office .... This highly political maneuver, to claim the "'game changing' Martian methane" for his own last-minute watch, is not the only striking legacy of Griffin's tenure; as noted earlier, he is leaving NASA not only against the backdrop of rising controversey surrounding Project Constellation -- but with sharp criticism (and from a former high-level NASA official that he himself once hired) of "insufficient Headquarters oversight" of major cost overruns in too many current NASA programs (like MSL!). There are now even some Washington mutterings about "contractor corruption." The latter accusation is blatantly political (as well as blatantly unfair ...) -- certainly, before any serious oversight investigation; as a new Administration comes to town, and the current NASA Administrator leaves, it (and we) should certainly not judge Mike Griffin on "Washington gossip and whispered inuendo" -- but on his record of substantive accomplishment and major contributions to the Nation's space program. In other words -- judge him on the facts. And the facts are these-- That, as soon as Dr. Griffin was appointed by the (now outgoing) President George W. Bush in 2005, his first official actions were to move swiftly and decisively to dramatically reverse the effects of two very bad Agency decisions made by his NASA predecessor, Sean O'Keefe: Griffin's first order was to reverse O'Keefe's inexplicable move to shut down tracking and data reception from the still on-going outer planets Voyager spacecraft missions (which, earlier in the last century, successfully flew by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- revolutionizing our knowledge of the known solar system in the process). Even now, over 30 years after they were launched, both spacecraft are still functioning, still transmitting unique data, still exploring beyond the farthest known frontiers of the outer solar system: relaying first-time information that is now characterizing the solar system's energetic relationship with the vast Galaxy beyond ... literally over a generation after leaving Earth! Yet O'Keefe, for a measly few-million-dollars-a-year for "operations," was prepared to eliminate these continuing "once-in-a-lifetime" Voyager science observations from the literal Galactic boundary of the solar system. Griffin swiftly ended this insanity .... The second courageous action Griffin took was to reverse O'Keefe's other, even more amazingly bad decision ... the former Adminitrator's plan to kill the Hubble Telescope! Griffin, almost immediately upon assuming the office of NASA Administrator, countermanded O'Keefe's surprising decision NOT to refurbish Hubble -- which O'Keefe had ordered abandoned because of "overriding fears" for the safety of the designated Shuttle crew, after the tragic loss of Columbia; within weeks of his confirmation as the new Administrator, and after ordering a careful study of the real risks, Griffin reauthorized a dedicated Shuttle mission to repair and install new scientific equipment on Hubble -- this amazing and incredibly productive National Resource -- rather than allow it to simply run out of power in orbit ... and expire. A 7-member crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis will now effect the Hubble repairs in May, 2009 ... after Griffin has (presumably, at this writing) departed the Agency with the Inauguration of a new Administration. And, speaking of the Shuttle .... It was, of course, Mike Griffin -- a "NASA engineer's engineer ..." -- who, upon his appointment by the former President (as NASA 11th Administrator ...), found as his first major challenge the effective management of the complex, risky and very expensive "return to flight" of the Nation's Space Shuttle Program (grounded for over two years by the disasterous tragedy of the Columbia accident, in early 2003). Returning the Space Shuttle to "routine service," and continuing its assembly of the Space Station in a reasonable timeframe, will surely stand as one of Dr. Griffin's definitely measureable accomplishments, as the new head of NASA; John Logsdon, a former director of "the Space Policy Institute," at George Washington University in Washington DC, noted that Griffin's "careful stewardship of the shuttle" would stand as perhaps his most important contribution. "He has been very successful of [sic] managing the risks of a risky program," Logsdon said. But beyond the two highly visible O'Keefe policy reversals, and his masterful supervision of "return to flight," it was Griffin's sustained (but behind-the-scenes) long-term interest in Mars which, in the current context, invites our most serious attention .... For, it was Mike Griffin who personally authorized budget extension after budget extension of the Mars rover missions themselves, long after their original "90-day warrenties" had officially expired. And, it was Griffin who then proceeded to encourage repeated public presentations -- and from NASA Headquarters -- of the on-going scientific revolution represented by these two extraordinary missions -- Spirit and Opportunity -- as they continued to roll across the Martian surface and rewrite Martian textbooks. Because of these repeated mission extensions, both rovers are still collecting unprecedented science data on that surface, on the Mars environment, and on its ancient past ... while also delivering reams of vital engineering data on their surface operations to the designers of future Martian rovers (like MSL ...). Last year, when the Griffin-appointed head of NASA's "Science Missions Directorate," Dr. Alan Stern, attempted to cut $8 million dollars from the rovers' current operating budget, ostensibly to transfer the funds to the beleagured MSL -- which would have forced JPL to literally "turn off" one of the still functioning, "beloved" rovers! -- Griffin personally rescinded Stern's short-sighted order. Sterns then promptly resigned -- subsequently writing a scathing series of op-ed pieces, for Science and the New York Times, castigating "NASA's Black Hole Budgets." Sterns had also cut projected future funding for Mars exploration by half -- reprogramming the monies for more outer planets missions (his specialty) and other science priorities. Consistent with this philosophy, he had also repeatedly rebuffed earlier JPL requests for substantial additional funding to cover MSL's cost overruns, before suddenly attempting to shut down one of the current rovers ... in order, at the last minute, to transfer "a dribble of money" to the troubled MSL Program. In the end, there was obviously a year of building disagreement between NASA's Associate Administrator for Science ... and the NASA Administrator himself ... specifically, regarding Mars. For reasons that are now becoming clearer ... "Mars" won.
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NASA is a unique agency. It is the only one with a specific charter, in the ringing words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy "... to do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard ...." Thus, precise cost-accounting -- for building machines designed to "deliberately explore and survive in the Unknown ..." -- cannot only be difficult for many in Washington (and the press) to comprehend, but especially to quantify in terms of their ultimate return on our collective investment. Griffin himself has tried to explain that such growth in NASA mission costs is an almost unavoidable part of ambitious engineering projects that are consistently attempting to operate beyond the state-of-the-art. "We know how to control cost -- just build more of what you built the last time," Griffin has pointed out. NASA's share of federal budget expenditures, as a percentage of total annual appropriations -- for the Executive, Defense, Social Security, Treasury, Energy, the State Department, Labor, Agriculture, etc., etc. -- is currently 0.6%. That's a shade over half a cent for every federal dollar spent, and ... declining; ten years ago, the percentage was 0.8%! NASA's current budget to do everything it does -- the Shuttle Program; the Space Station; the Planetary Program (including all the unmanned missions to Mars); Earth environmental monitoring; solar weather monitoring; deep space astrophysics, etc., etc., as well as the current development of the totally new "Orion" spacecraft and "Ares" rocket systems, both designed to return us to the Moon and take us on to Mars -- is slightly over $17 billion dollars a year. Or -- about the same as the state budget of Tenneessee .... Unlike any of these other budget comparisons, however, NASA's expenditures are literal investments in developing totally new scientific information; new terrestrial technologies to acquire that new science; new institutional management systems to organize development of that new science and technology; new computer systems to facilitate not only that new technological development, but then to analyze the new scientific information, etc., etc., etc. The technological and scientific benefits of this entire, sweeping "national research and development system," with all its various components and results, is then made freely available by NASA to the national economy, and commercial industrial development; this, of course, represents an extraordinary, cost-free R&D bonanza -- again, free of charge -- made directly available to every private business, corporation, academic and research institution in the United States! Our own efforts to underscore (and document) this now-quantifiable (if still largely unappreciated ...) "hidden benefit" of nationally, systematically investing in The Unknown ... by way of "NASA" ... can be found in an earlier Enterprise White Paper on the space program: Some specific examples. In terms of current NASA missions, after five years on Mars both Spirit and Opportunity have now exceeded -- and by some 20 times (!) -- NASA's original 90-day projection for a "scientifically successful mission" -- the starting point for all NASA cost accounting. Taking assembly, test, launch, and a year of operations for both rovers into account -- totaling an estimated $820 million dollars -- and dividing it by the current remarkably extended lifetime of the rover missions, results in an approximate "amortized mission cost" of ~$200 million for both rovers ... and still dropping! This includes a hefty estimate for the four additional years of mission operations -- the personnel, computers, tracking network, etc., required to actually operate the rovers on Mars from 2005 to 2009. No other government agency operates with such amazing efficiency, for such a "minimal" initial investment, even accounting for "cost overruns" (think Pentagon ... or now, heaven help us, "bank bailout" ...). And, this is not an isolated case. If the costs of Voyager are treated in the same fashion -- original development costs, assembly and operations from 1972 through 1989 (when the last Voyager flew by Neptune), all totaling about $835 million dollars -- when those costs are divided by the number of years both spacecraft have been relaying unique scientific information as they leave the solar system, the real price tag for both Voyager missions -- to four major planets, some 30 odd moons and now ... into the Galaxy Beyond -- comes to a total of about $42 million dollars! That's only about 20 million dollars per spacecraft -- or, the cost (these days ...) of a low-budget independent film! Or, if spread across the number of American taxpayers supporting the Voyager program all these years, for the number of years it has been going on-- About one penny per taxpayer ... per year!! Again, these are not the exceptions ... they are norms. Almost all unmanned NASA missions have lived far longer than originally projected, returned far more data than ever originally planned, and have made revolutionary, paradigm-changing scientific discoveries along the way. The same will hold for Mars Science Laboratory, except that ... now we know the stakes.
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For, the "good news" regarding MSL's delay (according to NASA's Michael Myers, Headquarters' lead scientist for its Mars Exploration Program) is that JPL fully expects to not only successfully complete and exhaustively test this unprecedented rover, in those additional two years (again, according to NASA's Myers at the January 15th briefing ...) it will also be able to now certify that MSL can be safely landed right in the midst of one of Mumma's methane plumes -- on a relatively high plateau, called "Nili Fossae." Originally removed from the list of potential MSL landing sites because of uncertainties as to whether the spacecraft parachutes could land it in a region with as thin an atmosphere as Nili Fossae, based on the robust scientific nature of the new methane data Myers strongly indicated that this methane site probably would be placed back on the preferred list of MSL landing sites -- for a final decision within the next two years .... Thus, if Mars Science Laboratory is launched from Earth in 2011; if it carries out a non-eventful cruise to Mars over the nine ensuing months; if it makes a successful entry and soft landing on the planet ... then all of us may, indeed, finally discover if Mars has current life-- In 2012. This seminal event, the official confirmation that "life exists outside the Earth" -- if it, indeed, takes place -- will now take place on President Barack Obama's watch .... And that will, indeed, Change-- Everything.
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Part II Coming Soon ....
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