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Posted by: Rakhir Nov 7 2005, 03:55 PM

NASA Dawn Asteroid Mission Told To ‘Stand Down’ .

The decision to stand down, according to SPACE.com sources, appears related to budget-related measures and workforce cutbacks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/051107_dawn_qown.html

Rakhir

Posted by: Mariner9 Nov 7 2005, 07:36 PM

I suspect the reason is both budgetary and technical.

Nearly three years ago I met a guy who was working as an 'intern' at JPL. He worked at another NASA center, and was essentially getting cross training by working at JPL for a while.

He told me at the time that Dawn was experiencing a lot of technical problems. At least one engineer had commented in a review meeting that "Deep Space 1 suceeding may have been the worst thing that ever happened to JPL"

I got the impression that JPL basically sold NASA headquarters that the Dawn mission could stay within Discovery Program cost constraints by stating that it would use a lot of design inheritance from Deep Space 1.

My friend told me that the thing he learned from all this was never take at face value anyone who uses the phrase "design inheritance" ... unless they are truely using the original component almost precisely as originally designed.

Well, Dawn is not Deep Space 1 with an extra couple ion thrusters, and it's been in cost and technical trouble ever since.

I suspect that with the 5 % workforce reduction at JPL, NASA headquarters wants to be darn sure that the reduction in personell doesn't mean that Dawn is threatened by either budget shortfalls or loss of any key personell.

Of course... there is also that nagging voice in the back of my head that reminds me that Discovery 2004 down select yeilded no mission, and the 2005 RFP Discovery was delayed for "several weeks" in April, and we still haven't seen that come out. So there may be a LOT of budget problems in Discovery land.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 7 2005, 09:09 PM

Andy Dantzler said at the COMPLEX meeting that the main question is whether the big parade of technical problems Dawn has been having are just a chance bad-luck collection of unconnected problems, or whether there's some programmatic cause for them. He also wants to know whether the cost of eliminating them will be too excessive. Thus the stand-down until an assessment group can look at this, since Dawn has a very long launch window.

As for Discovery, the only thing delaying release of the latest AO is the fact that Congress has yet to decide whether to stick to the Senate's current insistence on retaining the current $350 million cost cap (which Dantzler says would be disastrous) instead of raising it to $450 million as NASA wants.

Posted by: gpurcell Nov 8 2005, 02:35 PM

This mission has had nothing but problems. The major descope and now this. Given the small reserve they used to get it in under the Discovery cap, and the technical challenge of the mission, the lack of budget margins has really bitten it hard.

What really concerns me is that the the talking points from JPL make no sense. The standdown cannot be due to Lab layoffs as the contract would surely have funded sufficient FTEs to do the job. And the report of the investigative team indicates this is about a bit more than budgets.

Now, I've been on the wrong end of an federal department investigation, so I'm somewhat cynical about the process. But this would not be happening is, for good reasons or bad, high up folks in NASA did not have significant concerns about Dawn's prospects for success.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 8 2005, 03:06 PM

The stand-down will last for at least three months, until a decision is made. If there's a further cost overrun, the mission will be delayed into 2007 -- and if any new cost overrun exceeds $100 million, the mission goes into the dumpster.

I can tell you, by the way, that Andy Dantzler is furious at the Senate's attempt to retain the Discovery cost cap at $350 million.

Posted by: dvandorn Nov 8 2005, 03:56 PM

After reading Squyres' "Roving Mars," I want to remind y'all that this is exactly what *almost* happened to the MERs. They had some pretty impressive technical hurdles to overcome, with an ATLO that came together on a wing and a prayer. Add just one more major technical issue to overcome, and the MERs would have been forced to stand down for a late 2004 / early 2005 launch opportunity.

Just a reminder that trouble -- even serious trouble -- encountered in ATLO doesn't necessarily mean that the mission will go badly. It just means that they're working out all the bugs at the right time, on the ground when there's still a chance of fixing them...

-the other Doug

Posted by: ljk4-1 Nov 8 2005, 04:25 PM

What would they do with the probe if the mission is cancelled? All that time and money for nothing?

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 8 2005, 06:12 PM

Well, the trouble is that if you DON'T stick to your previous threat to cancel a selected mission that undergoes cost overruns, every future proposer is going to deliberately underestimate their mission's cost and then later say, in an innocent tone: "Whoops! Well, whaddya know?..."

It may have been a mistake to fly Messenger despite the fact that it busted its cost cap; the justifications were that NASA got a solid endorsement from the science community for doing so and that a lot of the cost rise was due to factors that provably weren't the design team's fault and couldn't have been anticipated by it. But that can't be done again without opening the gates of Hell. (And, yes, NASA has cancelled competitively selected missions that underwent cost overruns, even after the spacecraft had been almost completely built -- they did it with the "Clark" environmental satellite, and they almost did it with Gravity Probe B.)

Posted by: Mariner9 Nov 8 2005, 06:33 PM

The Discovery missiong cap of 350 million really does need to go up, or NASA's expectations for a Discovery Mission need to go down.

Several years ago I remember reading a summary of a meeting between NASA Discovery program officials and members of teams who had particiapated in Discovery missions. The meeting was a review of how Discovery was working, what wasn't working, and troubles on the horizon. One of the major points that the participants made was that Discovery mission scopes had been inflating since the start of the program.

Everyone felt that in the early days of Discover, they could propose something modest (such as a Lunar Prospecter) and compete with the other teams. But now the winners were at the Messenger and Dawn level.

Lunar Prospecter was a spin stabalized lunar orbiter, a simple instrument package, and no onboard computer. Compare that to the 3-axis stabilized Messenger Mercury orbiter sent out on a 6 year mission with 7 instruments and operating in a fairly hostile space environment compared to Lunar Orbit.

In order to compete, the proposers had to come up with extremely aggressive missions and overly optimistic cost and schedule estimates.

NASA seemed to agree, but made some general statement of "well, that is something to worry about, but we don't know how to address it right now".

Seems simple enough. Either you down scope, and start being more open to the CONTOUR type mission proposals again (well, hopefully better funded and carefully executed than CONTOUR) ... or you raise your mission cap.

Just as an outside observer, I'd be fine with raising the cap to 450 million and flying a little less often. But then again, there hasn't been a Discovery mission selected in 4 years, so a little less often seems to be turning into never.

Posted by: Mariner9 Nov 8 2005, 06:35 PM

One last point: when I said "it sounds simple enough" to down scope expectaions, or raise the cost cap.... I was being a bit sarcastic.

Obviously if it was that simple, they would have done it already.

Posted by: djellison Nov 8 2005, 10:14 PM

To quote senior Nasa management during the pre-launch-MER-panic

"I think it'd look pretty damn good in the Smithsonian"



Doug

Posted by: Marz Nov 8 2005, 10:23 PM

This mission needs to fly, so if they need more time and money to get it right, then that's what must happen. I'd imagine the science community puts a fairly high priority on this mission in light of recent Ceres observations, so maybe it should qualify for another waiver like Messenger?

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 9 2005, 10:41 AM

Good news on the Discovery cost cap front: the Senate-House conference has just officially raised it to $425 million. Not quite what Andy Dantzler wanted, but close.

Posted by: punkboi Nov 10 2005, 07:29 AM

Where did you read or hear about this, Bruce? 'Cause it's good news.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 10 2005, 08:07 AM

It's at http://www.rules.house.gov/109/text/hr2862cr/109_hr2862cr.htm . (Note also the order to NASA to initiate Europa Orbiter in FY 2007, and to bolster spending for SIM and the Sun-Earth Connection missions. But also note the staggering $280 million in Congressional pork -- er, earmarks.)

Posted by: ljk4-1 Nov 10 2005, 12:39 PM

Is that the same Europa Orbiter that was cancelled in 2003? Or is this a new concept? And will it have some sort of lander with it?

And how will this jive with VSE?

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 10 2005, 01:06 PM

It's a decidedly souped-up version with a much bigger science payload, made possible by the decision to use inner-planet gravity-assist flybys to reach Jupiter (why these were rejected for the original Europa Orbiter is one of the great mysteries of our time). There may or may not be enough of a mass margin to add a small piggyback lander -- in fact, that was one of the major subjects of the COMPLEX meeting, although the question was still wide open at the end of the meeting. It really depends on whether we can cram enough science onto such a small lander to be be worthwhile, as opposed to other uses for the same weight (more orbiter instruments, more radiation shielding to allow a longer lifetime at Europa, a higher bit rate, etc.) But the initial work on its design can be found at http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/jun_05_meeting/presentations/EGE_Mission_Study.pdf and http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/jun_05_meeting/presentations/EGE_Science_Instruments_Trace_OPAG.pdf .

And, yes, the funding does take NASA's new funding problems into consideration -- except for Katrina, whose final effects nobody is sure of at this point. They really are talking about a start in FY 2007 and a launch around 2012.

Posted by: tedstryk Nov 10 2005, 04:58 PM

I really hope this takes off. I mean, after New Horizons, there are no missions to study the outer planets except the relatively small-scale Juno. Continuity is a good thing.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Nov 18 2005, 09:51 PM

D A W N ' S E A R L Y L I G H T November 2005
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The eighth issue of the Dawn team newsletter, Dawn's Early Light, has been
posted on the Dawn website. Follow the links below to
view individual articles, or obtain the formatted pdf version. We look forward
to obtaining your feedback.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dawn Mission Status

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/html/20051117/dawnstatus.html

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dawn Instruments are Delivered to Orbital

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/html/20051117/delivered.html

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ceres Results Published in Nature

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/html/20051117/ceres.html

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Email List Signup Instructions:

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/html/20051117/signup.html

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Printable version of this newsletter (PDF format): To obtain a
formatted printable version of the newsletter, follow this link

http://www-ssc.igpp.ucla.edu/dawn/newsletter/pdf/20051117.pdf

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Dawn mission has been selected as NASA's ninth Discovery
mission to be launched in June 2006 to orbit both Vesta and Ceres. This list has
been established to keep members of the scientific
community informed about the Dawn mission.

Dawn's Early Light is published on an occasional basis and
distributed electronically. To contribute material or query the
team, email us at dawnnews@igpp.ucla.edu.

Editor: Carol A. Raymond, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 18 2005, 11:19 PM

Word now is that D-Day for the report on whether to delay or cancel Dawn is Jan. 20: http://www.lacanadaonline.com/articles/2005/11/17/news/lnws-dawn1117.txt .

Posted by: mars loon Nov 19 2005, 01:59 AM

Well said. Fix the bugs and lets launch this exciting mission.

Had we listened to the naysayers, Spirit wouldnt be celebrating the triumph on top of the Husband Hill Summit and Oppy wouldnt be on course for Victoria Crater

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 19 2005, 08:33 AM

The trouble with blithely doing this for Dawn is that -- unlike the MERs -- it was accepted as the result of a competition in which one of the supposed central ground rules for the proposing teams is that you do NOT exceed the maximum possible cost that you stated in your proposal without getting cancelled. Allow a mission to seriously break this rule, and you open the gates of Hell: EVERY team will deliberately understate its mission's real cost, and then look innocently amazed when they tell you that they need lots more money than they thought, and that they're sure you'll provide it...

It may have been a mistake to decide to break this rule for Messenger, and in fact NASA did so only after considerable wrangling. They've already broken it much more seriously for Dawn -- they'll fly it, albeit delayed, even if it undergoes a cost cap overrun of fully 1/3. But no higher. Nor should they -- and maybe they shouldn't fly it even if the cost doesn't go that high.

By the way, Kepler has also totally shattered its cost cap -- its cost is now $500 million. However, as Andy Dantzler told us, that's now the problem of the Universe Division -- which now has custody of the Kepler project, and which has already decided to adopt Kepler as a "Strategic" mission that is therefore immune from the Discovery cost-cancellation rule.

Posted by: mars loon Nov 19 2005, 02:40 PM

While your point on cost caps is valid, you have so enlarged it that I respecfully disagree with your point of view.

Science, not bean counting should be the driving force in these decisions!!!

It makes no sense to have a nearly complete spacecraft sit on the ground vs. launched to make ground breaking discoveries especially in light of the new Ceres Observations by Hubble.

It also makes no sense to "mothball" Deep Impact, which thankfully may now proceed with a follow on target

Finally, great news about the Europa Orbiter, thats long overdue. As is a follow-up to Cassini-Huygens

Posted by: gpurcell Nov 19 2005, 05:11 PM

As long as NASA exists in a world of limited resources, efficient allocation of those resources is critical. A few thoughts.

First, Dawn and Messenger's experiences (and I guess Kepler as well...I didn't realize they had blown their cost cap that badly Bruce) bring into question the entire Discovery program. Don't fall into the "sunk cost fallacy." The cost-benefit analysis to go forward with Dawn has to include both the funding stream to Dawn in future years as well as the consequences for the rest of the program. We have at least one "nearly complete spacecraft" sitting on the ground right now--Triana--and I don't hear much call from anyone for THAT to be launched.

Second, I think it should be fairly obvious that tight cost constraints on a mission will decrease both the science return (as had occured extensively during the Dawn mission planning) as well as the risk the mission will return very limited data due to a technical fault.

Third, I disagree with you about Deep Impact. There should be no expectation of extended missions on Discovery-class missions. The flaws in that spacecraft truly make me question the value of it going forward.

The Discovery effort is suffering from Goldin's insistence on asking for too much from the limited funds available. I hope they choose achievable missions for the next competititon or I fear it will be the last one.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Nov 19 2005, 06:40 PM

What were Deep Impact's flaws, other than the fact that everyone seemed to think that the impact crater would somehow be clear of debris right away so that the flyby probe could image into the comet?

How much will it cost to send DI to another celestial body? What science can it accomplish?

Posted by: tedstryk Nov 20 2005, 05:23 AM

I don't think Triana can be compared to DAWN. Triana is so tied to Al Gore that it was a victim of politics. I don't think DAWN has a political affiliation.

Posted by: Mariner9 Nov 20 2005, 08:16 AM

A bit of history here. NASA tried in the 1980s to get a Planetary Observer (if I recall the name correctly) program going, which resembled the Discovery program in scope and budget. But at that time Congress just didn't trust NASA on it's planetary missions... they had a way of growing bigger and bigger after approval.

Somehow NASA managed to convince Congress to go with the Discovery Program in about 1993. There were several aspects of Discovery that we all know so well: cost constraints (150 million for the spacecraft and mission in those days, exclusive of the launch vehicle cost if I recall). Plus the missions were competitively selected. And thirdly, something we don't discuss much these days, individual Discovery missions essentially were not approved by Congressional action. Congress gave NASA essentially a line item, an annual budget, and left it up to NASA to figure out how to spend it.

This was unprecedented for planetary missions. Previously each mission was a hard fought battle to gain approval. And two things had happened about the same time in the 70s. Each mission was approved furthur and furthur apart (so we were getting fewer missions) and each mission was tending to grow larger in size. This occured largely because the powers that be felt that since there were few missions, it was best to get as much as possilbe out of each one. The second factor was that after Viking a lot of the scientific community had it in their heads that from here on out missions should all be like Viking in scope. Or such was the feeling of Robert Kraemer, directory of planetary missions in the 70s.

So Congress gave NASA permission to shape their own destiny on Discovery. And since Discovery worked so well, we now have New Fronteirs. But if Discovery missions start to revert to the old ways of "oops, the cost just went up 25%" I'd think there was a serious risk that Congress would start to question the wisdom of it all and start to take away some of the authoirty NASA gained in Discovery and New Fronteirs.

So.... I'm hoping Dawn flies. I really like that mission. But I can see NASA getting worried about forgiving two missions in a row on cost over runs. There is a risk here.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Nov 20 2005, 08:36 AM

There sure is. To repeat: let ANY mission get away with that, and everyone else will also want it (as with the Epicure Dining at Crewe who found Quite A Large Mouse in his Stew). Our concern must be not for flying any ONE mission, but for making sure the Discovery Program as a whole properly succeeds -- which it can't if it allows incorrect or downright fraudulent cost estimates when it's selecting the damn missions in the first place. (Dantzler sounded downright exasperated when he was talking about how the Kepler team have been allowed to get away with their own huge cost overrun -- but, as he said, "It's not my problem anymore.")

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Nov 21 2005, 05:43 PM

Does anyone know how much DAWN saved, in dollar figures, by deleting the laser ranger and magnetometer? If possible, I'd be curious as to the cost savings for each one individually.

Posted by: JRehling Nov 21 2005, 05:59 PM

Yep. Letting a mission get away with this seriously is like letting some athletes use steroids, because it would be a shame to keep such a fine physical specimen from being in the game. What you do with that decision is eliminate the rule. And in the mission-over-budget case, you eliminate the budget.

Incidentally, an enormous number of projects, often governmentally funded, have gotten to break the rule. Examples are rampant -- Army tanks, Air Force fighters, Massachusetts freeways. The end result is almost certainly more harmful than is made up for with the good of one tank, one fighter, one tunnel. Dawn is a nice mission if it happens, but it's not worth killing the Discovery program over. Because the next time around, you'd have someone promising Venus sample return under a $400mm cap, winning the competition, then saying "Oops" when they run over that before the thing is 1/10 built.

Posted by: mcaplinger Nov 21 2005, 07:24 PM

Well, obviously a large portion of the proposal evaluation and selection process is assessing the cost realism of the proposal, so it's not like you can just claim anything and be believed. Of course, this cuts both ways -- people can end up claiming that a mission can't possibly be done for a given cost cap when it certainly could, just perhaps not by the organization doing the evaulating. That's one of the factors which IMHO has led to spiraling cost increases in aerospace in general.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Nov 22 2005, 01:31 AM

New updates about the DAWN's proyect:

NASA Dawn Mission Status November 2005

In mid-October, the Dawn mission team was asked by NASA Headquarters to cease all work except that which was critical to maintaining the viability of the Dawn mission to launch on a delayed schedule, still achieving all of its scientific objectives. This action was taken in response to concerns about the availability of funding in FY2006 to cover any problems that might arise during environmental and performance testing, particularly with regard to several pieces of subsystem hardware perceived to have experienced significant problems.

There are three items of concern:
1) The Power Processing Units (PPUs) that provide the high voltage power to the thrusters in the ion propulsion system. Not yet has started the test. It would be during on November and December 2005.
2) One of the redundant Attitude Control Electronics (ACE) boxes. Item above.
3) The xenon tank. --> Its solution might be by reducing its capacity of xenon fuel load from 450 to 425 kg to increase the safety margin.


Because of the flexibility afforded by the ion propulsion, Dawn's launch period extends at least into late 2007. The original launch period in June 2006 was chosen based on projected readiness to launch at that time. The baseline trajectory includes a Mars Gravity Assist in 2009, which fixes the timing of subsequent events.

More details: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=18748

Rodolfo

Posted by: BPCooper Nov 23 2005, 10:03 PM

NASA has marked the launch as no earlier than Nov. 17 2006 officially now.

Posted by: punkboi Dec 5 2005, 10:14 PM

Well... As long as DAWN flies.

Posted by: Decepticon Dec 17 2005, 01:45 PM

From the current issue of Astronomy magazine.

I found this neat. I never saw this picture of ceres.

Here's the link. http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=3478

Posted by: mars loon Dec 18 2005, 05:52 AM

Here is an earlier news article on this from Spaceflightnow.com.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0509/07ceres/

As I wrote in an earlier post in this thread, This scientifically exciting mission should fly !!
Its ridiculous to leave a nearly complete spacecraft on the ground unless there are unresolved technical issues!!

The small cost overrun is within the increase of the new Discovery cost cap.

Posted by: punkboi Jan 21 2006, 12:35 AM

Wasn't today (1/20) the day NASA was gonna decide whether or not to continue with the Dawn mission?

Posted by: Sunspot Jan 21 2006, 10:07 AM

Can't see anything on the Dawn website about it: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Posted by: nprev Jan 21 2006, 06:22 PM

Saw a blurb that Dawn was delayed on the CNN bottom-screen ticker a few minutes ago...

Posted by: Rakhir Jan 21 2006, 08:58 PM

Dawn will not launch this year
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/ap_060121_dawn_hold.html

"The planned summer launch of the Dawn spacecraft has been indefinitely postponed"

Rakhir

Posted by: punkboi Jan 21 2006, 10:30 PM

I didn't want my name sent to the Asteroid Field anyway...



Just kidding.

Posted by: BPCooper Jan 22 2006, 03:14 AM

Disappointing news. And one less launch.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Jan 22 2006, 03:45 AM

Postponed due to technical problems with new technology of ion engines.

Dawn, however, has suffered several setbacks, including ruptures of two of its fuel tanks during testing, forcing engineers to reduce the amount of xenon gas that will be loaded into the tanks.

The project was capped at $371 million, according to Russell, and when project scientists asked for an extra $40 million last year, NASA ordered the standdown to figure out why it was going over budget.

Rodolfo

Posted by: gpurcell Jan 22 2006, 04:50 AM

I suspect this project is done. Sound like there are significant technical problems and no reason to believe that the DAWN team can overcome them at a cost near the capped award.

I wonder how much unexpended funding will be available to roll back into the Discovery program account. Maybe enough for a couple of Missions of Opportunity....

Posted by: nprev Jan 22 2006, 07:03 AM

Does Dawn have Hall effect ion thrusters, or is this a completely new design?

Posted by: mchan Jan 22 2006, 07:44 AM

IIRC, Dawn uses the thruster design from DS1, but three thrusters.

Posted by: SFJCody Jan 22 2006, 02:36 PM

That's a shame. I don't think a good understanding of the processes that created Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars will be possible until we look at the 'mini-terrestrials' Ceres and Vesta.

Posted by: Decepticon Jan 22 2006, 02:39 PM

Sadly I would even take a scaled down project with a Ceres Only Target.

Does anyone agree?

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 22 2006, 03:26 PM

Yup. They can't let this one go - perhaps it's an ideal international mission in waiting...

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Marz Jan 23 2006, 02:33 AM

I agree. Ceres must rank pretty high in terms of science targets, especially since it was discovered to have a differentiated mantle, and lots of water, and possibly some ancient organic chemistry.

I'd imagine the launch windows are fairly flexible for this mission, since it only relied on a mars flyby... although it might require sacrificing visiting Vesta.

I sure hope this project is only slightly delayed instead of being mothballed.

Posted by: nprev Jan 23 2006, 04:08 AM

Hmm. Anybody tight with anyone over at the Planetary Society? Now that NH made it safely off, perhaps it's time to mount a campaign to save Dawn!

Posted by: punkboi Jan 23 2006, 05:31 AM

I'm a member of TPS

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Jan 23 2006, 08:38 AM

That possibility was discussed at the November COMPLEX meeting where I first heard that Dawn would be put in a stand-down mode -- and it was quickly dismissed by Andy Dantzler on the grounds that changing Dawn to a one-asteroid mission would only very slightly lower its cost. Its science payload has also been whittled down to an absolute minimum.

I do wonder, though, whether it might be possible to augment its previous budget with the $35 million that goes to the next Discovery Mission of Opportunity, allowing it to fly after all, albeit late. NASA might be amenable to this way out of the problem, given how close the craft is to completion. I intend to look into this.

Posted by: Rakhir Jan 23 2006, 12:28 PM

Ask Emily

Posted by: gpurcell Jan 23 2006, 02:36 PM

Bruce, to me the question really is whether the NASA managers for DAWN feel any confidence that the contractor running the project can even tell them what the overrun is going to me to complete the project. I can't speak to the technical side of it, but it is pretty clear the budgeting assumptions used in the proposal were way ouf of whack with reality.

Right now we have an almost completed spacecraft...but that is a sunk cost.

How much is on the table:

1) There will be funds left in the project budget category for completion of the spacecraft and operations.
2) NASA has got to fund the launch for the bird...how much is that?

The launch cost could easily be moved into the next Discovery mission and that would help accelerate the following mission.

Posted by: JRehling Jan 24 2006, 01:28 AM

This will be one to watch: Clearly, with a nearly-completed craft, Dawn represents a better bang for the (additional) buck than starting some new mission from scratch. But this sends out the bad message that haunts bureaucracies: What will stop the next Discovery proposals from targeting a science/dollar value that matches the Dawn standard (spend all you're allowed, then a little more).

A sadistically punitive answer is to give the spacecraft to some other PIs to fly. That gets the mission in the air for not much (additional) money, but doesn't give anyone an incentive to try to duplicate this scenario in future Discovery proposals. But taking the craft from the rightful owners, if legal (?), may introduce operational showstoppers, apart from being somewhat loathsome ethically. This isn't Stalin's space program...

At the same time, giving the original team extra money is problematic.

If the project is being, in any sense, re-funded, I would just as soon see some of the downscoped original goals being reinstated...

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 24 2006, 01:48 AM

Although I think this is one of the better Discovery missions (as originally proposed) from a science standpoint, even with the currently descoped science payload, and while I certainly hope the mission flies, I feel that funding the cost overrun (notwithstanding the fact that that MESSENGER came within a hair's breadth of being cancelled for similar reasons) would set a bad precedent. Indeed, I think that further descopes (either of payload or target) would degrade the mission dangerously close to the performance floor.

Posted by: RNeuhaus Jan 24 2006, 02:50 AM

Agree. The last chance is up to the end of the year 2007. The setback is sometime good since it starts to review, track down the critical problems and develop a plan in order to determine the next fund rise to solve the identified problems. That way will help to stop the vicious circle.

Rodolfo

Posted by: Redstone Jan 24 2006, 06:31 PM

NASA management is being briefed on Friday by the independent review panels. Then they'll make a decision, to fund or cancel, which is expected "within weeks."

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn8624--nasa-may-pull-plug-on-dawn-asteroid-mission.html

My fingers are crossed.

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Jan 24 2006, 10:57 PM

I wonder if something similar to Mars 2003/Phoenix might be possible, i.e. canceling the mission and then someone (possibly some other PI) might propose flying a modified version of this thing a few years from now.

One problem with not canceling Dawn is the fact that this really isn't the same mission as it was when it was selected. The magnetometer and laser altimeter have been dropped so it is possible that some of the mission against which Dawn originally was competitively selected really are better than Dawn in its present form. So flying Dawn without these instruments might be unfair to these missions.

Posted by: JRehling Jan 25 2006, 02:59 AM

Note, though, that the Phoenix craft was a JPL mission, so it's not quite the same thing. Some personal career glory would have ensued from the mission, even a lot, but it was a Fed project first and foremost. And Phoenix is a significant reworking of it, to say the least. And the original was grounded for a nonbudgetary reason.

I'm so eager to see the laser altimeter fly that any prospect to have the mission be eventually reworked to include it has appeal of its own.

Incidentally, what are the specs on a Ceres/Vesta trajectory should this launch window be missed? It would take a number of years for Vesta to catch back up to Ceres, but perhaps a very different flightplan could be used, even switching the order of which asteroid was visited first.

I also wonder with this mission if a third or even fourth flyby could fit in if additional budget were available. Imagine that Dawn is placed on the shelf and a Discovery proposal to use the craft asks for full Discovery funding, from the starting point of having that craft as a freebie. No other mission could compete, and the new mission could be rather ambitious, given the added funding. There may be an engineering cap on delta-v, but perhaps restoring the two lost instruments could go along with a more ambitious mission in that target-rich belt.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 25 2006, 09:07 AM

I really hope that Dawn flies, and reasonably soon - but a surprising number of spacecraft built in various countries have reached even beyond this stage and just not been flown. Until the thing is on the pad...

(sigh)

Bob Shaw

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jan 25 2006, 04:58 PM

Bjorn raised an interesting question but, like you, I think the two situations are factually distinguishable. Frankly, I have trouble seeing the realism (let alone the fairness) of resurrecting a possibly-cancelled Dawn in the Discovery 2006 solicitation à la Mars Surveyor Lander 2001->Phoenix Mars Scout. As you note, the former is a PI-led mission, while the latter was a NASA "core" mission, part of the Mars Exploration Program. Refer, for example, to the recently published http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1970&view=findpost&p=38077.

I could very well imagine many other proposers crying foul if Dawn is cancelled in its present incarnation but the PI is allowed to re-propose the same mission under the new Discovery AO, presumably at a much lower cost than other proposers who might want to propose the same type of mission; indeed, the exact mission.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Jan 29 2006, 06:52 PM

DELTA ROCKET WORKERS SET TO VOTE ON ENDING STRIKE
-------------------------------------------------

A strike by Boeing machinists that has grounded the Delta rocket fleet for
nearly three months could be edging closer to resolution. Negotiations
between the company and union leaders have resulted in a revised contract
offer that will be put to a vote on Wednesday.

http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0601/28boeingstrike/

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Jan 31 2006, 01:03 AM

I got a message yesterday from Chris Russell yesterday on his possible plans for Dawn, but it's so vague and noncommittal in its information that it doesn't really tell us anything -- excpe that he apparently isn't ruling anything out, including an attempt to keep Dawn going with additional funding from a new Mission of Opportunity proposal:

"The IAT [NASA review board] did present its findings [Friday] and there are things it feels we should do to ensure mission success. We certainly are prepared to do these and move forward to launch.

"NASA officials were not planning to act on the IAT recommendations at this time. Perhaps more important than what the IAT said is whatthe president will say in just over a week. NASA needs the money to execute its science program. If that money is further constrained, many programs will have to be cut.

"The PI is quite confident that we have a successful program ready to take the last steps to launch if we are given the go-ahead. The cost of a mission of opportunity and what we have left in the bank (no we are not out of funds) certainly would launch Dawn. So why not just delay the Mission of Opportunity and invest in Dawn? Funding profile might be one issue.

"I think NASA has options, but it may also have too many problems
at once. We wait with bated breath.

"Would I propose [Dawn] again [as a whole mission]? I am very pleased with the work JPL and Orbital have done, and we have a great spacecraft ready to be tested and sent to the Cape. There are other exciting missions that could be done
with a Dawn clone and done cheaply now that we have all the procedures, requirements and software completed. The first bus is off the assembly line. The next buses could get started tomorrow. I would love to drive a 'Dawn 2' to another of our mysterious protoplanets. Yes, I would propose again."

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 31 2006, 10:25 AM

Bruce:

How do you think these statements compare with the very negative responses we heard of to a clone for NH? The Pluto spacecraft is simpler, highly conservative and it's sister is half built; in addition, it's management team has managed to get it's vehicle off the ground...

...seems a bit unfair!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: Decepticon Jan 31 2006, 01:51 PM

Curious is there a thred on this?! I didn't know there was a clone probe!!

Is there any plans as to where it will be sent?

Posted by: Bob Shaw Jan 31 2006, 07:47 PM

There isn't a clone as such, but there's spare hardware already built, and a pitch was made for a NH2 flight using it. The (alleged) costings were such that it was quite uneconomic. The suggested targets were, of course, KBOs...

...and yes, it *was* discussed here!

Bob shaw

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Jan 31 2006, 09:59 PM

I imagine that what Chris Russell is thinking of is that a second Dawn would be cheap enough that it could fit into the new, raised Discovery cost cap (as the first Dawn now can).

Posted by: mars loon Feb 1 2006, 01:50 AM

Well if I understood what you quoted, the first DAWN is the pathfinder. The second would naturally be somewhat easier and perhaps cheaper as a result of the normal learning curve for all aspects of the mission. Right now I'm praying for a go-ahead for the nearly complete first DAWN to visit these exciting miniplanets.

Posted by: peter59 Feb 4 2006, 08:51 AM

This is incomprehensible to me. Dawn may be cancelled, but congress approved next 6.2 billion dollars for ISS and pseudo-experiments like this SuitSat experiment.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/060204_exp12_eva2.html

Spirit, Cassini, New Horizons and Dawn it's real space exploration. Gravity Probe B it's real great scientific experiment !

SuitSat and other "great" ISS's experiments (mostly biological), it's scientific humbug. Wasted 100 billion dollars and counting, therefore no money for Down, no money for real science.

Posted by: nprev Feb 4 2006, 09:01 AM

I sincerely hope that NASA will allocate the resources needed to fix the propulsion system problems & get this bird out where it belongs; I understand that the final decision has not yet been made.

If Dawn gets semipermanently mothballed for lack of needed support by NASA and not for unrecoverable technical problems, I suggest that we petition the Planetary Society to campaign for Dawn's salvation. TPS has the muscle; New Horizons proved that!!!

Posted by: dvandorn Feb 4 2006, 01:07 PM

First: SuitSat was NOT in any way a NASA-funded experiment. So, your first statement is not truthful.

Second: Your second statement is truthful, but you contradict it with your third statement, which is not truthful. If there is no money for real science, where did the money for Spirit (and Oppy, too!), Cassini and New Horizons come from? Much less the money for MRO, LRO, MSL, and all the other missions out there, present and future?

Dawn has already cost nearly half a BILLION dollars -- that's not "no money" for Dawn. That's a LOT of money for Dawn.

It is completely acceptable to ask the question, how much more than a half a billion dollars ought we have to spend for a mini-tour of the asteroid belt? And can you state, with a straight face, that ISS and Shutle are responsible for the fact that the Dawn project team has been unable to provide a *working* spacecraft for the half-billion dollars they've already spent on it?

If you want to know why money for Dawn is drying up, don't look at $6 billion for ISS/Shuttle activities -- look at a half a TRILLION dollars to fight a war in Iraq. Or look at $85 billion spent so far on reconstruction after Katrina and about five other major hurricanes that struck the U.S. in 2005. Those two little, minor funding drains have had just a *little* more of an impact on the U.S. budget than U.S. manned spaceflight -- like several orders of magnitude more of an impact.

I want to see Dawn fly, too. But I am sick to death of seeing the manned spaceflight program being blamed for the Dawn team's inability to get their spacecraft built and working for the amount of money they *promised* it would cost. It's simply not a truthful argument, and must therefore be rejected.

-the other Doug

Posted by: djellison Feb 4 2006, 03:17 PM

DV - spot on.

Doug

Posted by: gpurcell Feb 4 2006, 03:30 PM

Just to pile on a bit, you should realize that Gravity Probe B...is probably not the best example for you to bring up, for reasons of economy and of scientific merit. I'll just leave it at that.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 5 2006, 07:32 PM

Let me add, though, that all this is entirely separate from the question of whether Dawn itself should be cancelled. That mission was accepted by the Discovery program on the condition that it stayed within the specified cost cap, which it has now seriously exceeded. As I've said before: if you allow that cost cap to be busted in this case, you will be opening the gates of Hell by encouraging all future proposers to deliberately lowball their price estimates, and then later come back to NASA with expressions of wide-eyed innocence to rattle their begging bowls like Oliver Twist and ask, "Please, Sir, it was an honest mistake. Can I have some more?" And some more, and some more, and... Uh-uh. This is a good argument even against completing Dawn with additional funding from the supply for the Missions of Opportunity (although I made that suggestion earlier).

Posted by: Marz Feb 6 2006, 06:44 AM

BTW: Sky & Telescope's March issue has a tiny blurb that basically says that Dawn was told to stand down for review, but there's optimism that the go-ahead will be given once the actual costs are re-evaluated for a launch in 2007. There was also a blurb that J.Webb telescope has already suffered from costs ballooning, and they're reducing costs where possible.

While I agree that NASA can't afford bad cost-management practices to become entrenched, clearly there must be weight given to the scientific importance of a mission. Ceres is not just some rubble-roid; it's probably a key piece in understanding solar system evolution, and probably a much more interesting world to visit than Mercury.

Heck, if I were head of Dawn, I'd just borrow that "Mission Accomplished" banner the President used and take a photo of the team infront of the completed spacecraft. Then, request extended mission funding about 5 times the initial budget. If congress gripes, be sure to call them "unpatriotic".

As to the larger argument; sure ISS is a behemoth, but one could apply that argument to almost any unmanned space mission too when compared to funding requests by terrestrial biologists, chemists, etc... I think the answer for what is an appropriate level of funding for manned exploration requires a larger context: what are it's near and long-term goals. I tend to think the end-game is a sustained manned presence on mars (or possibly Ceres?), but at what timeframe? Clearly these worlds should first be explored with sterile robots to clear up the biological questions before lobbing hairless apes at them.

It's hard for me to answer what the optimum levels of funding for which programs and at what % of the GNP; . I tend to think more research $$ should be spent trying to get a space-elevator going at this point, but I'm woefully ignorant of how many show-stopper technology gaps there are into seeing that a reality.

But as the Doug's have said, it's silly for scientists to squabble over such a tiny amount of the federal budget that's measured in *trillions*. I mean, you could eliminate NASA *entirely* (and flushing down one of our best think-tanks in the process), and not even make a 1% dent in the budget. The only squabble to discuss is why did Dawn miss its budget target and/or why is the Discovery cap so low to preclude anything but a NEO mission.

I was so darn optimistic in the 90's watching the usa defense portion shrink year after year. Boy, what a lousy start the 21st century has gotten off to... it just seems like an economy that astromical can do anything, until one realizes the scope of the world's problems anyways.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 7 2006, 07:10 PM

You know, that might be a workable Solomonic solution to the problem (and I don't mean Sean Solomon...) Let the mission fly but take custody of its scientific returns away from the original proposers.

Posted by: mcaplinger Feb 7 2006, 07:17 PM

Seems like the technical problems are the fault of Orbital or their subs, not the science team or the instrument providers. My guess is it'll be a while before Orbital gets picked to do a planetary mission again.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 8 2006, 06:41 AM

Mike Caplinger says that this discussion has gotten a wee bit off the subject of Dawn. He is, of course, correct -- so my imminent reply to Scisys' arguments will be over in the "Policy" department below.

Posted by: David Feb 9 2006, 10:10 AM

Maybe so, but that seems to be a moot point, since as of the the latest budget there aren't going to be any new projects anyway. Space science would be better off trying to complete the current projects that can be completed, if there is not going to be any funding for future projects in the immediate future.

Posted by: Analyst Feb 9 2006, 11:13 AM

Orbital, the company building the Dawn spacecraft, is doing this for the first time. Contrary to all the talking about doing this cheaper and faster and better than the majors (LM, TRW, Boeing etc.), they can't. It's not their fault, because is hard. What makes me mad is they are proposing to do it cheaper and faster and better. And a lot of people believe them. And wonder now.

Other topic, but the company building the Falcon rocket is talking about boosters in the Atlas and Delta range now, before their first launch ever. For much less money of course. Spaceflight is not cheap because it is hard and therefore expensive, not because LM is overcharging. They don't burn the money for joy, they test and test and redesign and test and test ... and sometimes fail even then.

Last example: During MPF and later MPL there has been a lot of talk about how expensive Viking was and we can do now better and cheaper. They doublechecked during the 1970ies, even tested chutes in real flight, and trusters ... They didn't with MPL and Deep Impacts camera. And used a very risky approch for Contours departure ...

Analyst

Posted by: mcaplinger Feb 9 2006, 06:50 PM

Your post implies that spending more money decreases risk. It ain't necessarily so, at least not at all times and not linearly. There have been plenty of failures in programs where few expenses were spared: Hubble and Galileo, just to name two.

The MPL failure had little or nothing to do with parachute or thruster testing, and it's really hard to estimate how much more money would have been needed to find the problem. If a couple of people had been thinking just a little harder, a few more lines of code would have been written and there's a good chance we wouldn't be using MPL as a negative example.

Posted by: ljk4-1 Feb 9 2006, 10:15 PM

The following is quoted from the FPSPACE list:

From ALLEN THOMSON thomsona at flash.net

Thu Feb 9 12:59:02 EST 2006

Relayed from a source who does not wish to be identified.

******************

One of the things that nobody here seems to understand is that many of the NASA programs that are getting cut or placed under review have their own problems, and they are on the chopping block not explicitly because of the Vision for Space Exploration, but because NASA officials have lost confidence in their ability to come in on time and reasonably close to schedule.

For instance, DAWN suffered from sudden cost increases last year. But that is not the whole story, because what really made NASA officials worried was the nature of the increases. They occurred in parts of the program (the ion drive) that were supposed to be easy. So when DAWN started to experience cost overruns on the easier parts of the spacecraft, NASA understandably became worried that it would also experience cost overruns on the harder parts as well. They lost confidence in the management of the program and put it under review. Put a simpler way, DAWN would not be in danger of cancellation if the program was running smoothly. The Vision is not threatening DAWN.

The complete post is here:

http://www.friends-partners.org/pipermail/fpspace/2006-February/018939.html

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Feb 10 2006, 02:57 AM

That is exactly what Dantzler said at COMPLEX -- which, I believe, is where the news of the stand-down was first announced. They were running into a puzzling cloud of problems with multiple parts of the project that were supposed to be routine and easy -- and so the stand-down was to provide time to determine whether this was just a run of random bad luck, or whether something more systematic was going on.

To repeat what I said at the start of this thread: if the total projected cost overrun is over $100 million, into the trash can it goes. Otherwise, they'll probably try to salvage it.

Posted by: djellison Feb 10 2006, 04:25 AM

As someone mentioned over at the HZ, pity they don't apply the same logic to Shuttle/ISS/VSE.

Doug

Posted by: gpurcell Feb 10 2006, 04:36 AM

Like I said back in November:

I really think that you cannot separate this review from the radical descoping the mission unwent even prior to the stand-down. I'd sure like to know how much is left in the DAWN's budget item...that plus the launch costs could be a pretty nice piece of change to toss somewhere.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Feb 10 2006, 06:07 PM

That's hard to believe, Doug.

And no, I'm not referring to the "pity they don't apply the same logic to Shuttle/ISS/VSE" portion, a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree. Rather, I find it hard to believe that such an intelligble, to-the-point comment could emanate from http://www.habitablezone.com/

Posted by: djellison Feb 10 2006, 06:15 PM

Since going Grondine free a few months ago, it's not TOOooo bad actually.

Some utter tripe from time to time, but still some interesting things as well. The occasional thing that I spot that I doubt I'd have seen otherwise. In terms of structure and admins etc - it's a 'strange' place though

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Feb 13 2006, 11:36 PM

Excerpt from the February 13, 2006, issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology:

Space Technology
Orbital Enhances Satellite Manufacturing Facilities to Meet Demand
Aviation Week & Space Technology
02/13/2006, page 64

Frank Morring, Jr.
Dulles, Va.

[...]

"ALONG WITH THE Pegasus-class spacecraft built on Orbital's MicroStar and LEOStar buses, the company is well along on its first planetary spacecraft, which is sized for a Delta II-heavy. Built for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Dawn spacecraft is a Discovery-class mission that will use three xenon-ion engines to thrust out to the main asteroid belt on a 10-year mission that will take it to the large asteroids Vesta and Ceres. The spacecraft is built around a composite tank with a titanium liner designed to hold 900 lb. of xenon fuel for the solar-electric propulsion system.

"A couple of technical issues have left the Dawn mission in limbo for the moment, although its planetary launch window remains open until the second half of 2007. NASA is reviewing the xenon tank for safety, after test failures on similar hardware, and is rechecking the long-term reliability of the power processing unit.

"'In both of those cases, we think we see our way clear to getting to a flightworthy situation,' says John McCarthy, Orbital's program manager for the Dawn spacecraft.

"IN KEEPING WITH NASA's overall push beyond low Earth orbit under President Bush's Moon, Mars and Beyond exploration initiative, Danko sees planetary spacecraft like Dawn as a promising growth area for Orbital's satellite-manufacturing operation.

"'In the satellite business I think growth is going to come basically from two places: one, from the geostationary satellite business, or [two,] from winning a larger market share within the government program,' he says. 'We won the Dawn program several years ago. That was our first entry into our planetary market, and we think we've done a very credible job there. We're looking to get more programs in the deep-space planetary market, which for us is a larger market share of the NASA overall budget.'"

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 2 2006, 11:43 PM

NASAWatch/Spaceref is http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/03/dawn_mission_ca.html that Dawn has been cancelled.

Posted by: Decepticon Mar 3 2006, 12:24 AM

!%#*(*&%!

Posted by: jamescanvin Mar 3 2006, 12:57 AM

I couldn't have put it better myself!

I REALLY want to see Ceres!

If only we could get the IAU to come up with a suitible definition of a planet...

Posted by: Decepticon Mar 3 2006, 04:12 AM

I'm itching to see Ceres myself.

The only thing we could look forward to now is earth based observations with these new telescopes.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 04:31 AM

Hrmpph. Well, I can't say that cancelling a mission that had gone so far over its cost cap was unjustified; but I do find it interesting that it gets the ax while Certain Other Programs which are both vastly huger and have vastly higher percentage cost overruns go shambling onwards as unstoppably (and productively) as Godzilla.

Russell, by the way, had just published an EGU abstract listing his planned targets for a follow-up "Dawn 2" mission. Not surprisingly, they were Hygiea and Psyche ( http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU06/05272/EGU06-J-05272.pdf ). God knows what he'll do now.

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 3 2006, 04:45 AM

That is true. But they also employ lots and lots of people in F-L-O-R-I-D-A.

Posted by: punkboi Mar 3 2006, 04:52 AM

I guess that means I can throw away the printout I made of that Dawn certificate after I submitted my name...

Posted by: John M. Dollan Mar 3 2006, 05:58 AM

I only know that I'm hugely dissapointed. I'm sure there's more to the cancellation than what is being reported (for instance, I had no idea about the over-budget and technical issues), especially at this early juncture, but considering all of the other "indefinite postponements", things are looking pretty bleak.

...John...

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Mar 3 2006, 06:07 AM

Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, CRAP !!!

Edit: A nice touch by NASA to announce this with Russel on his way to his mother's funeral. Couldn't this announcement have waited a few more days?

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 3 2006, 06:16 AM

In all fairness, is NASA HQ supposed to keep track of this sort of thing? How would they reasonably have known?



I'm not sure if publishing this was hubris, chutzpah, or just utter cluelessness on his part.

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Mar 3 2006, 06:29 AM

The people with the responsibility to release the information are working in a small enough community that word of mouth should have been enough. After nearly 50 year of existance and more project cancellations than you can shake a stick at, NASA should be well versed, for PR purposes if nothing else, to have fairly well established procedures for informing project leaders and personel that would include avoiding awkward actions like this.

I'll admit all the facts aren't out. Maybe Russell insisted they get back with him on any cancelllation immediately regardless. But they way that press release was worded, it didn't sound very good.



Mine, too. Let's all of us get together and have a bonfire.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 3 2006, 07:03 AM

I think you must not have dealt with NASA HQ much; it's not that small a community and the word of mouth between inside the Beltway and everywhere else is much thinner than you might think. And I'm not sure what "press release" you're talking about -- I haven't seen any confirmation about the Dawn cancellation, just the NASA Watch item -- and Cowing clearly has an axe to grind concerning Mary Cleave, which may or may not be justified but as usual makes him sound peevish at best.

Posted by: ermar Mar 3 2006, 08:15 AM

AP News has confirmed it.... http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/science/3697747.html

It's all very nice seeing a few hundred meters of rock floating in the void (Hayabusa), but oh, what I wouldn't give to see a mini-world in its own right...

Posted by: djellison Mar 3 2006, 08:21 AM

If it IS cancelled, then surely it deserves the Phoenix treatment? Put it up for another team to pick up and fly, because the science is still justified imho

Where's our save the mars lander and save the pluto mission man when you need him - time for a new campaign

Doug

Posted by: peter59 Mar 3 2006, 08:59 AM

"The project was capped at around $371 million, project scientists said previously. But the program was ordered to stand down after scientists asked for an additional $40 million last year."

$40 million it's cost less than 30 hours of the ISS's existence. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Posted by: edstrick Mar 3 2006, 09:29 AM

Quoting King Richard Milhouse the first: <expletive deleted>

I think Dawn is far from dead, but it will probably require some congressional pushing and green oil <$$$>, together with some way of restarting the project, aka. Phoenix II. Cost caps and "drop-dead" limits are there for a reason, which has been increasingly made obvious by missions that blew past them.

A mission like Dawn needs to fly, but not necessarily this mission as currently configured with this team.

Posted by: AndyG Mar 3 2006, 09:50 AM

And to ensure success, it must be called the "Dollar-lite Underpriced Spaceprobe requiring better Karma" mission.



Andy

Posted by: djellison Mar 3 2006, 10:14 AM

That doesnt change anything though. "But it's only two tanks" or "that's a new cinema" or "12 hours of ISS" or whatever - none of those make the $40m any less or more available.

Doug

Posted by: peter59 Mar 3 2006, 11:29 AM

International Space Station it's real Great Galactic Ghoul. His appetite never will be fulfilled. What next for cancellation, missions in progress ? Voyager, Messenger, NH ? Maybe, if the station’s permanent crew will be six or seven, everything is possible. Do you remember long period without any new mission (77-89) ? It was a very sad period, and may be repeated.

Posted by: djellison Mar 3 2006, 12:01 PM

There's some great discussion about this going on over at the Planetary Society members forum, (the chance to interact with Louis and Bruce warrants the price of admission) - and I think this says everything we're all thinking..

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.rss.html?pid=19811

Doug

Posted by: Decepticon Mar 3 2006, 01:18 PM

ISS is a bad word in my book.


I'm gonna Bite lip when in the future when they need to deorbit this Battlestar Galactica because of mechanical failures.

Posted by: alan Mar 3 2006, 01:18 PM

Gotta save money somewhere so they can play golf on the ISS
http://www.newscientistspace.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn8791/dn8791-1_550.jpg

Posted by: Toma B Mar 3 2006, 02:38 PM

That's really SAD!!!


So, is there any hope that Dawn mission can be saved by US Congress or anybody???

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 3 2006, 04:53 PM

The cases may not be equivalent. The Mars Surveyor '01 lander didn't fly largely due to timidity and lack of confidence on the part of NASA HQ; no one involved in the project thought it was terribly risky (although Squyres' book makes it clear how much of the science had already been descoped, and that couldn't have helped its case -- PHX has a significantly different science payload.) And the Pluto mission was just a question of money.

While without detailed documentation it's hard to be sure, the Dawn situation seems to be that the spacecraft contractor just screwed up, and the hardware is badly flawed and in need of substantial additional funding to repair. And NASA is being asked to give that money to the same company that failed to deliver on earlier promises. One might almost argue that they should do that more often, not less.

Of course, it's not helping NASA's case that no such documentation has been publically released. I'd like to see more disclosure on that.

Posted by: Mariner9 Mar 3 2006, 05:30 PM

I think the folk comparing Dawn to the International Screwedup Station is looking at the funding from the wrong angle.

It is true that Science funding just got cut, in order to transfer money to an ailing, perpetually overbudget project.

Now, the science community is screaming: why are you moving money from a sucessful program to an unsucessful one?

Well, apparently Dawn was an unsucessful project. I would think it would undermine the Discovery program, especially now, if they did what the typical NASA behavior is: bail out a bad project with more money.

What better way to be able to back up your position as a responsible program, if you actually stand your ground and terminate it?

Then you can hold your head high. Say (with a straight face), "we really learned a lesson from that one".

Posted by: pilotpirx Mar 3 2006, 05:36 PM

Sacrificial lamb. I figure NASA will save $200M in launch costs and will use some of the savings to mend fences with other science projects.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 06:20 PM

Quite frankly, I agree with Mike Caplinger. The only thing I'll add is that, while I lament Dawn's demise, as I would any loss of science, the handwriting for this mission has been on the wall for months now. Therefore, cancellation should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially in the current fiscal/political environment.

And there might be a not-too-subtle message in the cancellation: Future Discovery PI's Be Warned That Already-Selected Missions Can And Will Be Cancelled. Ed Weiler almost pulled the trigger on MESSENGER, which also experienced cost overruns before launch. Maybe NASA is setting an example with Dawn.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 3 2006, 06:30 PM

Also, the politics of the mission can't be helping. Most of the payload is European, so there's no constituency there. And Orbital's lobbying position has always been unclear to me; they seem to spend more effort on bigger-ticket defense-related items. If JPL is making a big stink about the cancellation of Dawn, I haven't heard anything about it yet; it's probably small potatoes compared to MSL or even Juno.

Posted by: JRehling Mar 3 2006, 06:43 PM

Since Mike's post contains the phrase "seems to be", are you agreeing that the part following the "seem" seems to be true, or is true? I'm not just being picky; I'm wondering if you have a different/clearer evaluation of that.

If the subcontractor is to blame, then giving the mission to new PIs and the same subcontractors would be rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent. We might as well hold Saddam Hussein accountable for the Dawn overruns.

It would be a "nice save" ending if we had a 3/4-finished spacecraft that could be finished, adding the LIDAR, and flown while the guilty were punished and the innocent blessed, but there may be no such route.

Clearly, a mission like this will be flown one day (at least, the science goals will be pursued again; no guarantee that Ceres and Vesta will be targets of the very same craft). If the subcontractors screwed the pooch here, then the most important thing that could come of this incident might be to introduce some heightened accountability to these and other subcontractors. It might prevent not only another Dawn/Messenger, but even another CONTOUR. Speaking wishfully. Meanwhile, Ceres and Vesta aren't going anywhere, and it's a stretch to see those science goals as time-critical by any but the loosest definition. We probably stand more to gain in the long run, scientifically, from heightened accountability over the next N missions than we did from flying this one mission now. Discipline is never about making things nicer in the next time unit, but rather is about making things cumulatively nicer, integrated over the future.

If this announcement hit the PI at a time of personal tragedy, that's very unfortunate, but I'm not sure how in principle an organization could/should avoid that potential. Not only because the info is hard to come by (do you phone someone's aunt the night before lowering the boom on them to get an "all clear"?)... you don't extend a $multimillion affair to improve one person's week. Other people's life directions hung in the balance, too.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 06:55 PM

Good points. I guess Dawn lacks the equivalent of a guardian angel like Senator Mikulski, though, as you note, its payload (and thus beneficiaries) are widely diverse.

In fact, since there's a connection out here with UH, too, I don't know whether I'm surprised or not surprised that the Hawaii congressional delegation hasn't weighed in. If you press me, I'll opt for the latter. Senator Inouye seems to be mainly concerned with getting defense dollars out here, something that, given his seniority, he has been very successful at doing. As for Senator Akaka, well, I'll just leave it at that

UH gets science-related funding but there are examples of lack of political support. Namely, funding telescopes atop Mauna Kea. This is due primarily to Native Hawaiian concerns about the sacred aspect of the mountain top.

Postscript: Emily has just http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000475/ Dawn-related blog entry.

Posted by: elakdawalla Mar 3 2006, 06:56 PM

I just posted some notes from a conversation with Dawn Co-I Mark Sykes in my blog.

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000475/

--Emily

Posted by: volcanopele Mar 3 2006, 07:22 PM

I'm sorry, but I definitely don't support Sykes' explanation. Yes, the stand down order cost them even more if they were to get started up again, but they already had 40 million in cost overruns by that point. Like Mike and Alex said, at some point NASA has to say enough is enough and make an example out of one of these missions. I just wish they would use the same logic on a few other programs

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 07:26 PM

Nice interview. Sykes's comments are interesting and informative, and his frustration (anger?) understandable, though I don't know what to make of some of his statements. Frankly, some of them are completely at odds with what has leaked out over the past several months, but his have the advantage of detail. Having said that, it would be interesting to hear NASA SMD's in-depth side of the story, too, since there are always two (or more) sides to every story. I wouldn't wait for that to happen, though.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 07:35 PM

Actually, despite my snarf about the ISS, I'm inclined to agree with Mike Caplinger that this is really a separate issue. If you set cost limits for competitive proposals at all, you HAVE to back them up at some point -- or honest cost estimations by the competitive teams will instantly disappear. And Dawn had gone way over the limit, whereas Messenger had just gone a small way over it. They had to draw the line at some point. (The cost overrun on Kepler is now absolutely horrendous, but, as Andy Dantzler told us in exasperated tones at the November COMPLEX meeting, that's no longer his responsibility -- the Universe Directorate is determined to hold onto it anyway. Maybe this is because, with the delays in SIM, Kepler is the only way to get the census data on the frequency of Earthlike planets which we need in order to decide which of the two alternate designs for TPF to adopt.)

So: if the Big Bad Station hadn't gobbled up still more of NASA's budget, they might have been more likely to bend the rules and allow Dawn to continue -- but they probably shouldn't have.

And I'm inclined to agree that Cowing jumping NASA for informing Russell about the cancellation on the way to his mother's funeral is a cheap shot -- NASA is not composed of clairvoyants. (Would that they were!)

Posted by: odave Mar 3 2006, 07:36 PM

So what will happen to the Dawn hardware? Will it get put in storage, or will it get dis-assembled and the components used elsewhere?

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 07:38 PM

One small side note: the Dawn team, contrary to John Rehling, regarded the elimination of the magnetometer from the mission as much more important than the removal of the laser altimeter. The magnetometer could not only have told us what kinds of metallic cores both worlds possessed; it could have detected the induced magnetic field from any subsurface ocean on Ceres (which is a real possibility.) The Dawn team removed the laser altimeter almost as soon as cost trouble began, but they were publicly heartbroken to lose the magnetometer.

Posted by: Toma B Mar 3 2006, 07:53 PM

I find it difficult to believe that NASA will end space mission that is 98% finished...why anybody did not noticed it before...

This is awful!!!

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 07:58 PM

What Sykes said was that "98% of [Dawn's] hardware [has been] delivered." That is an entirely different proposition from a "space mission that is 98% finished."

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 08:28 PM

Only the rumors I've heard about Orbital, which, quite frankly, Sykes appears to have confirmed, even if in a backhanded manner.


From what I understand, the Discovery science review panel rated the original Dawn science portion of the proposal very high, so I agree that the goals (probably with Ceres and Vesta as the targets) will remain high-priority.


I find myself in rare agreement with Bruce here; I think it was a cheap shot accusation. I am fully sypathetic to Russell's loss, especially after having lost my own father over a year ago, but as others have noted, how is NASA responsible for the coincidental timing of notification of cancellation?

Frankly, you do tend to find these type of "human interest" anecdotes in these types of stories. It's sort of like a newspaper story of a victim of a natural disaster being told they are going to be audited by the IRS. It's sad but it happens. Witness the accounts in recent stories that Fiona Harrison found out about the cancellation of her Explorer-class mission NuSTAR during the February 6 press conference and not by, say, a personal phone call from Griffin or Cleave. I guess I wouldn't have been surprised to read that she found this out on the same day she had a root canal operation.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 08:55 PM

In Sykes' interview with Emily, despite his energetic efforts to pin ALL the blame on NASA HQ, the fact remains: at the time of the stand-down order, Dawn was $63 million over its original $350 million cost cap. Sykes claims that a lot of that is due to NASA's retroactive order for an increase in the mission's cost reserves; but the reason for that was that Messenger and Deep Impact had both ended up costing far more than estimated at the time they were picked -- which made it entirely reasonable to assume that the same thing would probably happen to Dawn. (And to Kepler -- which, sure enough, is now well over the $500 million mark.) Note that even with that $63 million budget hike over the original cost cap, Dawn was STILL having severe developmental problems.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 09:09 PM

P.S.: "Rare agreement", Alex? See if you get invited to MY next birthday party...

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Mar 3 2006, 09:12 PM

I was completely unaware there were any European contributions to this project. The article here states that equipment was "contributed". Until now, I was under the impression the framing camera and other equipment were purchased. Does anyone know how much, in dollar terms, agencies outside of NASA paid for this?

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 09:24 PM

http://www.space.com/news/060303_dawn_cancelled.html
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 03 March 2006
01:25 pm ET

Well, I was wrong. It looks as if NASA HQ is getting some of its side of the story out. Here are a couple of interesting excerpts, one of the "he said, she said" variety:

"That [independent assessment] team reported to NASA in January that there were 29 individual major issues that needed to be dealt with before Dawn was ready to go, Dantzler said."

This doesn't sound (a whole lot) like what Sykes told Emily viz., "[T]he conclusion of the independent assessment team, which was delivered to Headquarters on January 27, was that it 'does not see any reason that the DAWN Project cannot be achieved within the identified cost and schedule changes proposed.' In other words, there's no technical barriers to the project going forward."

Another intersting excerpt from the Space.com story:

"Dantzler told SPACE.com that NASA is looking at distributing Dawn hardware to other missions currently being considered or in the future. 'Some of the subsystems should be good for other spacecraft,' he said."

It doesn't sound like Dawn is going to be revived; in fact, it looks as if it is going to be cannibalized for spare parts.

Posted by: JRehling Mar 3 2006, 09:24 PM

I agree with the scientific reasoning when my face is rubbed in it; I'm just exercising the amateurish snobbery of liking what I can see, and I can't see particles or fields.

I suppose with Ceres, the L.A. would seem to be only marginally interesting, since local altimetry could be had from shadows, etc. But with a (perhaps uniquely) weirdly shaped world like Vesta, who knows how significant a precise topographical map might be regarding the initial differentiation and that Big Impact in its past?

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 09:28 PM

I haven't seen any of the cost breakdown information for Dawn. As for instruments provided by other countries, these are typically the result of barter agreements between NASA and the other countries' space agencies (i.e., on a no-exchange-of-funds basis).

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 3 2006, 09:35 PM

Regarding the European instrument contributors who are grousing about Dawn's cancellation, all I can do is repeat what Superchicken would always tell his assistant Fred after the latter had gotten beaten to a pulp by the villain: "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." Maybe they should direct a little of their wrath toward the "Dawn" team for seriously underestimating the mission's cost in the first place.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 3 2006, 09:37 PM

I know Alex understands this, but let's be clear. NuSTAR was given additional phase A funding in 2005 with the understanding that a flight decision would be made in early 2006. That decision was made on schedule, in the negative. To say, therefore, that NuSTAR was "cancelled" is wildly inaccurate. Now, it would be interesting to know what the basis for that decision was: developmental risk, change in science emphasis, NASA-wide budget problems, or something else. But no one on NuSTAR should have had any expectation that they were flying for sure if they were just in Phase A.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 3 2006, 09:43 PM

In all honesty, Mike, I didn't realize the details. In fact, I was just referring to the recent accounts in Science and Nature relating the story (quoting, acutually) of how Harrison found out about NuSTAR's fate.

Posted by: mars loon Mar 3 2006, 10:04 PM

--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Toma B @ Mar 3 2006, 07:53 PM) </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
I find it difficult to believe that NASA will end space mission that is 98% finished...why anybody did not noticed it before...

This is awful!!!
[/quote]


Right on TOMA B !!!!!!

Just saw this a short while ago.

IT IS AN ABSOLUTELY STUPID DECISION to cancel DAWN.

despite what some have said, the cost overrun was less than other missions like Messeger. more later

now I am departing to do public outreach to support NASA and motivate kids to study science

made more difficult by nonsense like these bean counter budget cuts

ken

Posted by: Holder of the Two Leashes Mar 3 2006, 10:10 PM

So what's the deal now? I assume they'll be getting their equipment back, to use as best they can?



I stand corrected. I'll make a mental note of that website and author for future reference.

Posted by: David Mar 4 2006, 12:12 AM

I don't know anything about the politics involved in this, so I won't comment on them. But the bottom line is that we are losing precious information we should be getting about a very important part of our solar system.

As far as encouraging or discouraging accurate budget estimates, I don't see why the team that is running the project should be making estimates of the cost. Obviously there is going to be strong pressure on the team to low-ball them. Why not have an independent analyst look at the initial plans and produce his own estimate for NASA? Why should NASA be dependent upon a figures created by the people who are most interested in getting the project approved?

As it is, even with the project cancelled, a bunch of people got paid over several years. If they'd come in with a more accurate (higher) estimate earlier, there would have been no project and no money. How can "no project/no money" be more of an incentive than "incomplete project/some money" (with the chance of maybe convincing someone to complete the project) ? There's never going to be an incentive to come forward with high-end figures, if those are primarily what NASA looks at in picking projects.

I'd rather that NASA simply pick the projects on the basis of the science, and commit before hand to providing whatever money is necessary to achieve the goals -- while keeping a close eye to see that the money is going to the science goals and not elsewhere. As it is, we have a haphazard series of projects with no real plan behind them, and no commitment to any of them, except the ones that are fortuitously succesful, and that only after the fact. It's a recipe for continued disasters.

Posted by: Mariner9 Mar 4 2006, 12:19 AM

I think some people are missing a subtle point here. There seems to be an assumption that given the late date, and the physical completion state of the spacecraft, that (1) the project is almost complete and (2) just spend a known ammount of money and it will fly and everything work perfectly.

None of us have seen the technical review. We don't know what the actual state of the Dawn project was. Most of the positive comments seem to come from people on the project who want it to continue, biased witnesses to be sure.

I've been in the engineering and software field for 20 years, and I can tell you from painful experience that just because it's been built, or software code been completed, you are not necessarily close to completion.

If a given project was built poorly, designed poorly, or the software written badly.... well, the more you test, the more problems you uncover, and the more fixes you make and so on..... Ive seen it time and again in the software world, where the code was written hastily or with bad architecture, and no matter how much you try to fix it you only make it a bit better, you never make it good.

Perhaps there was no confidence at NASA HQ that Dawn could be reasonably recovered and flown sucessfully. In that case, the best use of everyone's time, and taxpayer money, is to stop throwing good money after bad.

It is by no means a stupid decision, in that case it is a very difficult but wise decision.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 4 2006, 12:27 AM

For the sake of completeness, I tracked down the specific references that referred to NuSTAR being "cancelled." Maybe they should have interviewed Mike for a balanced quote And the quotes came from a Nature article and yesterday's story in the NYT:

Excerpt from Tony Reichhardt's article in the February 16, 2006, issue of Nature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7078/full/439768a.html
Tony Reichhardt
Nature 439, 768-769 (2006).
doi:10.1038/439768a

[...]

"There is fury not just at the size of the cuts, but at how they were decided and announced to the science community. Heidi Hammel, a planetary researcher with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, says that NASA's advisory council was not operating during much of last year and so 'there was absolutely no way to know how these decisions had been made. It's sort of like a black hole over there.'

"The lack of communication extended even to projects that were being axed. For example, the California Institute of Technology's Fiona Harrison had an Explorer mission that was about to enter its development phase after two years of work. But in what [Charles] Beichman [of the California Institute of Technology] calls an 'egregious breakdown of the process', she learned during the press conference that her NuSTAR X-ray astronomy satellite had actually been cancelled." [Emphasis added]

-------

Excerpt from Dennis Overbye's article http://nytimes.com/2006/03/02/science/space/02nasa.html in the March 2, 2006, issue of The New York Times:

"Much of the concern among scientists is for the fate of smaller projects like the low-budget spacecraft called Explorers. Designed to provide relatively cheap and fast access to space, they are usually developed and managed by university groups. Dr. Lamb referred to them as 'the crown jewels in NASA's science program.'

"In recent years, one such mission, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, produced exquisite baby pictures of the Big Bang, while another, the Swift satellite, has helped solve a 30-year-old mystery, linking distant explosions called gamma-ray bursts to the formation of black holes.

"Explorers, Dr. Lamb said, are where graduate students and young professors get their first taste of space science. Until recently, about one mission was launched a year, but under the new plan, there will be none from 2009 to 2012. In a letter to Dr. Cleave last fall, 16 present and former Explorer scientists said, 'Such a lengthy suspension would be a devastating blow to the program and the science community.'

"One author of the letter, Fiona Harrison, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, said she first learned from a news conference that her own Explorer project, an X-ray satellite observatory called NuStar, was being cancelled after several years of development. Dr. Harrison said that she had been invited to reapply in 2008, but that in the meantime she had to tell her graduate student to find another thesis project. [Emphasis added]

"Dr. Harrison said she was thinking of leaving the country or perhaps even the field of astrophysics."


I vote for David as the next NASA Administrator or SMD Associate Administrator! Or at least the person who is in charge of writing the AOs. Anyone like to second this motion?



Very well stated, Mariner9. And I snipped the bulk of your post just to save space. I guess old USENET habits die hard.

Posted by: nprev Mar 4 2006, 12:33 AM

Well, without pointing fingers of blame...dammit. Just dammit, is all.

The fact remains that this is an extremely important mission with major science objectives, and I think that a project replan or even a partial restart is essential. Hopefully, TPS and other space interest groups will rally to revive the objectives (if not the current incarnation) of Dawn!

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 4 2006, 12:50 AM

NASAWatch/Spaceref has http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=19838 a "Letter from PSI Director Sykes to House Science Committee Chair Boehlert Regarding Cancellation of NASA's Dawn Mission."

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 4 2006, 02:43 AM

I'll certainly go with that -- but I've been under the impression that the Review Board, to a considerable extent, already was independently reviewing the proposers' cost estimates. Apparently they need to do a better job of it.

And -- as Robert Clements and I and others have said earlier -- the current standards for picking Discovery missions, in which science return is actually regarded as MORE important than cost-effectiveness, is the exact reverse of the standard that should apply, given the natural tendency of proposers to underestimate their costs and overestimate their science return. (Of course, all this assumes that NASA was honest in setting that rule in the first place, which it wasn't.)

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 4 2006, 04:06 AM

I think that, as the dust settles, it may prove that, due to technical concerns, the higher-ups at JPL may be a bit relieved. Still, I think this is unfortunate. When I first heard about Dawn, I was very excited, particularly because it sounded much more like a big ticket mission than a discovery mission. So I guess reality as reared its ugly head.

Posted by: tedstryk Mar 4 2006, 05:28 PM

This brings up that old question of whether Deep Impact or Stardust could be retargeted to Vesta or Ceres (Deep Impact in particular, since it has more fuel and better instrumentation for remote sensing). I realize it is a game of orbital mechanics, but it would be a really neat opportunity. And with its instruments, Deep Impact could do a good job studying either one (Considering the fact that in a close flyby, not hampered by avoiding comet dust, and with a larger target, MRI could get some good images, and HRI, despite its focus problem, would probably make some pretty recoverable image of things like high contrast terminator topography).

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 4 2006, 10:52 PM

I don't see any way it could be made to work. Orbital mechanics aside, neither one has big enough solar panels to power its instruments properly for such a distant object. (You'll recall that they had to shut down all the instruments on NEAR except its camera for the Mathilde flyby.) It's better to fly craft specifically designed for the Main Belt for such missions (although they could be multiple-flyby missions as opposed to orbiters. We do, after all, need to look at a widespread representative sample of MB asteroids.)

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 5 2006, 12:17 AM

Deep Impact's aphelion is at about the orbit of Mars, so it's got no chance of getting to the main belt. Stardust's is at 2.7 AU and Ceres' orbit is from 2.55 to 2.99 AU, so it's a much better prospect; of course, the orbits are unlikely to be in phase to allow a close approach, and Stardust only has ~140 m/sec of delta-v left.

http://discovery.larc.nasa.gov/discovery/dpl.html has some information on these spacecraft.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 5 2006, 12:28 AM

Although Ceres looks highly improbable, a bit of orbital tweaking via the Earth might yet make something feasible... ...asuming the spacecraft has the oomph!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 5 2006, 01:00 AM

DI has only about 340 m/s of delta-v left. I think it would need many km/sec to get to the main belt, even with an Earth gravity assist. I'd be happy to be proved wrong, though.

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 5 2006, 01:55 AM

No:

The word is *delighted*!

The simple facts may conspire against us, though - it's great if a spacecraft can do more than we asked, but by no means a failure if it doesn't! If, by any chance, there's some funny trajectory, then let's be *very* happy!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 6 2006, 09:30 PM

Not to beat a dead horse but here are a couple of new references pertinent to this thread:

An article from the March 7, 2006, issue of Eos:

Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas: Protoplanets, Not Asteroids
This article points out that, although Ceres, Vesta, and Pallas have been classified as either fragments or asteroids, they instead appear to be small planets, or protoplanets.
T. B. McCord, L. A. McFadden, C. T. Russell, C. Sotin, and P. C. Thomas
Eos, Trans., AGU, 87, 105 & 109, (2006).
http://www.agu.org/journals/eo/eo0610/2006EO100002.pdf#anchor

Given the normal lead time required for articles, I imagine the authors had to make some hasty, last-minute revisions, namely by adding a passage at the very end: "In 2001, NASA had selected the Dawn mission, which would have visited and investigated Vesta and Ceres starting in 2010. The mission was scheduled for launch in June 2006, but NASA cancelled the project on 2 March."

And there was an article posted last Friday on Spaceflight Now, which I haven't seen anyone mention:

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0603/03dawn/
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: March 3, 2006

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 6 2006, 10:04 PM

I stand http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2339&view=findpost&p=44136.

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 7 2006, 04:32 PM

From the Spaceflight Now article:

In the period leading up to the stand down, worries also spread concerning several key spacecraft issues. Relying on a solar electric ion propulsion system, Dawn was to have carried a tank for the xenon gas propellant required by the three cutting edge engines. The xenon tank - composed of a titanium liner covered with composite wrapping - is located deep inside the spacecraft bus, and other pieces were added around it during the manufacturing process.

The flight tank inside Dawn passed pre-flight tests that included taking it to pressures far above those necessary for ground or space operations. Yet when similar tanks were put through more stringent tests, they ruptured at pressures lower than the expected design limits. By finding that the tank was not as strong as first thought, engineers were forced to compensate the weakness by forming a new strategy that included not filling the tank to its full capacity.

I think this might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. I wonder if the Ceres encounter was going to be descoped as a result of the reduction in fuel.

One descope too many, I suspect.

Posted by: djellison Mar 7 2006, 04:37 PM

I just hope there is a thorough investigation into why the mission ended up being scrubbed - as it is a mission failure. Just because it failed on the ground doesnt mean is should escape a mission failure review board. A root cause should be identified, and if it was a contractor - then the contractor should be penalised for it.

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 7 2006, 07:05 PM

I think "failure" is too harsh. When you strip away most of the rhetoric, it appears, to me at least, the entire cancellation issue revolved around risk management. NASA SMD didn't seem convinced the Dawn team could manage the risk within the cost caps. The Dawn team, while conceding the cost overrun, felt that, through no fault of their own, the bar had been raised for them. In other words, they felt the mission was doable under the original cost caps but that NASA SMD erected more hurdles and then axed the mission when the team couldn't clear them. Sykes may have had a point when he claimed that NASA was "negative" about Dawn "for years." That may be true. On the other hand, it also may be justified. Maybe there was a negative trend after selection (e.g., the science descope) and that contributed to a case of "buyer's remorse." If true, it couldn't have happened at a worse point in time.

I'm still curious, though, about the independent asseessment team report. That both NASA SMD and the Dawn team could come away with opposite conclusions is, to put it charitably, interesting, even when factoring in the inevitable spin from both sides. If this is true, then the report was worthless.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 7 2006, 08:59 PM

At the COMPLEX meeting, Dantzler mentioned the problem with the xenon tank (although I don't remember him going into any detail), but added that the craft was still supposed to go to both asteroids because it had been concluded that sending it just to Vesta wasn't cost-effective enough to justify the mission. He emphasized that the mission had had a whole rash of seemingly unconnected technical problems with things that were supposed to be routine, and that the stand-down was to determine whether this was just bad luck or whether there was some kind of systematic incompetence involved. I suspect the latter turned out to be the case, and that any ass-covering going on right now is coming from the Dawn team itself rather than from NASA HQ (despite the fact that, if the latter were blamed for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, I would regard the matter as being at least worth further inquiry).

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 7 2006, 09:58 PM

You also have to remember that NASA HQ has ben steeling themselves to cancel a mission that's blown its cost cap for a while, now. Recall that HQ told Steve Squyres that Spirit and Opportunity would look great sitting in a museum -- it came very close on the MERs.

It was bound to happen to someone, eventually. NASA HQ was looking to make an example of someone, and now they have.

-the other Doug

Posted by: mars loon Mar 8 2006, 01:08 AM

There is alot of misinformation being spread here and in some of the news reports in Spaceflightnow.com and Space.com.

There are NO TECHNICAL ISSUES preventing DAWN from launching. This nonsensical cancellation is based on funding shortfalls at NASA and politics

This mission is NOT a failure, but there appears to be a failure of WILL to launch a virtually complete spacecraft that is GOOD to GO. Sadly this can be traced to certain higher-ups at NASA and lack of White House budgetary support for NASA which has resulted in many cutbaks in space science missions in addition to DAWN. I find this and the growing anti-science attitude in this country to be very troubling.

ken

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 8 2006, 11:22 AM

What was that French phrase? 'Pour encourage les autres'

The Romans did it, too - they decimated their legions to punish failure. Not in the sense we use it now, but by executing one in ten of the members of the failing groups.

I bet there are some fevered examinations going on right now by project managers and PIs who thought they might have to go back to the cash cow for another bucket of moolah!

Bob Shaw

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 8 2006, 01:36 PM

Assuming that this cancellation was due to the new science funding cutbacks at NASA doesn't really make sense -- the craft, after all, was almost finished, and had they cancelled it for that reason they'd be flushing several hundred million in already-spent money down the toilet just to avoid spending an additional $50 million or so. I imagine it really was cancelled because NASA finally did decide to get tough on their cost-cap policy (as they did with the Clark satellite). And I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Griffin played a strong personal role in that decision.

Posted by: pilotpirx Mar 8 2006, 03:59 PM

How much was Dawn's launch vehicle - $150-200M?.

Too bad there is no cost cap policy on the Shuttle and Station program.

Has the unmanned vs. manned debate become politically incorrect? A few years ago that was a hot topic.

Posted by: JRehling Mar 8 2006, 06:36 PM

I have an overwhelming urge to use a sports analogy.

Watching a track race once, I saw a runner who was going to be in multiple races running his third of the day. He was in second place near the end of that race, well ahead of third, and could have eased up to save some energy for the fourth race. But the runner in first fell back to tempt him to finish this race hard. As soon as he took the bait, the leader sped up, and the race ended with a furious finish but with the guy still finishing second, by a tiny margin. A lot of unnecessary effort for nothing. And I beat that guy in his next race.

Dawn was a lot like that guy's third race.

I remained heartened that before decades past, we'll probably see the same science as a non-descoped Dawn, and maybe a better eventual outcome than if some descoped version had flown. It's been mentioned that Discovery may be running out of missions. Well, this is a flyable mission, and it's going to stay near the top of priorities. In one form or another, it'll fly. I doubt very much if five new Discovery selections will occur before something taking on some or all of Dawn's science goals is selected. Mercury is "done", barring a smash-and-grab sample return. Venus probably won't get more than one Discovery mission. The Moon and Mars have their own programs, and Phobos/Deimos definitely wouldn't get more than one Discovery mission. If Contour is reflown, that would do the comet matter into the ground. I doubt if Genesis will be reflown. Outer SS options exist, but at the margins. It seems obvious that the asteroids are going to stay near the front of the queue, and the big asteroids aren't likely to be "shut out" by the small ones.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 8 2006, 07:32 PM

NASAWatch/Spaceref has http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.rss.html?id=1097.

Posted by: helvick Mar 8 2006, 07:41 PM

Now that is definitely something that makes one you go "hmmmh". I was a bit unclear about the sequence of events, reported in this way it seems decidedly odd.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 8 2006, 07:49 PM

As I posted over at TPS Members Forum: "This is an interesting development. Although it's not totally unprecedented, it isn't a common occurence for a NASA Administrator to overrule a programmatic decision of a NASA Associate Administrator, assuming, of course, that Griffin doesn't merely reaffirm the cancellation decision after a decent interval of 'deliberation.'"

We'll see. However, if Griffin does spare Dawn, then that is great news for them. I wonder, though, whether this new development could be bad news for the http://discovery.larc.nasa.gov/. In other words, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 8 2006, 09:04 PM

Emily has http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000480/ some interesting new details in her blog.

Posted by: gpurcell Mar 8 2006, 11:40 PM

Very interesting.

A Kepler solution, perhaps?

Posted by: nprev Mar 14 2006, 01:18 AM

From the Sky & Telescope site (emphasis added by me):

"In January, NASA officials canceled the high-energy X-ray Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuStar) Explorer mission. On March 2nd NASA's new head of science, Mary Cleave, terminated the Dawn asteroid mission. That craft had only a few months of work left to go before becoming launch ready. Cleave's announcement about Dawn came shortly after she testified to a hostile Congressional panel about the cuts.

Congressional leaders challenged both the internal and external priorities affecting the budget. The science community questioned whether large, overbudget missions should be protected at the expense of losing both the research jobs needed to analyze the data and the small missions needed to round out a healthy science program.

It's very unusual for missions to be cancelled so close to launch. The Dawn termination apparently saves only $30 million out of a $370 million project, and Dawn's cost overrun was mostly due to the impact of previous delays imposed by NASA headquarters rather than technical issues."


Okay, then. Talk about penny-wise/pound-stupid. Emily, can TPS start some action now???

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 14 2006, 01:49 AM

Let's wait and see whether the cost overruns (which were actually closer to $60 million) really WERE the result of NASA HQ actions. In that connection, I'll have a note later on in the "Policy and Stategy" section about "Nature's" new free-access article on the effects of the Webb Telescope's gargantuan cost overruns on the rest of space astronomy -- most of which have nothing to do with any fault by NASA HQ.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 14 2006, 01:54 AM

So, the Reichhardt article I http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=1304&view=findpost&p=44684 in the JWST thread is now freely accessible?

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 14 2006, 03:04 AM

Well, it was 2 days ago, although I can't seem to connect to it now. However, first I downloaded a copy, which I attach.

Hmmph. That didn't work. I'll try it again down in the "Policy & Strategy" section.

Posted by: mcaplinger Mar 14 2006, 03:07 AM

Yes, but terminating it also saves the remaining development, launch, operations, and science costs, which probably total up to at least $150M if not more.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 14 2006, 03:11 AM

I had heard that Dawn's total estimated cost was up to $413 million -- as compared to the original cost cap of $350 million. And Sykes' complaint that a lot of this was due to NASA expanding the reserve requirements in the wake of Messenger and Deep Impact is unconvincing -- the reserves were expanded precisely because NASA, by then, had every reason to believe that those reserves would be needed in reality. (Note also that Kepler is currently up to $520 million!)

Posted by: djellison Mar 14 2006, 08:27 AM

So why has Kepler not been cancelled? A much much bigger cost overrun. It should have been cancelled before a Dawn cancellation was even considered surely?

Doug

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 14 2006, 12:05 PM

I mentioned previously that, at the November COMPLEX meeting where Andy Dantzler first broke the news of the Dawn reappraisal, he also mentioned that phenomenal cost overrun on Kepler -- but pointed out that it now falls under the control of NASA's separate Universe Division, which has decided to retain it as a central part of the extrasolar-planet search program despite the overrun. (This might have something to do with the delays on SIM, since at least one of those two missions will be necessary to do a census of the frequency of Earthlike planets so that we can decide which of the two radically different TPF designs should be followed.) As Dantzler said in an exasperated tone, "It's no longer my responsibility."

Posted by: djellison Mar 14 2006, 12:13 PM

So basically, your Discovery mission will get cancelled if it's over-running the budget, unless we really really like it, in which case we'll move it to another division.

Doug

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 14 2006, 04:32 PM

I recall some grumbling among the planetary sciences community (for various reasons) when NASA opened the Discovery Program to missions like Genesis and Kepler. The most common complaint was that Genesis belonged in http://lws.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and Kepler in http://origins.jpl.nasa.gov/index1.html.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 14 2006, 11:41 PM

Which would have made eminent sense -- except that the only competitive programs either of those two divisions had was the Explorers, which had a lower cost cap. Once again, I wonder whether NASA ought to just throw ALL possible space-science subjects together for competitive missions within a specific cost cap, instead of having separate competitions for Solar System missions, solar missions, space astronomy missions, magnetospheric missions, etc. I've already mentioned the suggestion that Solar Probe could be included among the competitive proposals for New Frontiers, since it's in exactly the same cost zone.

Not strictly true -- Kepler would have been moved to the Universe Division whether it underwent a cost overrun or not. And it was that Division's management which then separately decided to keep it on despite its huge cost overrun.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 14 2006, 11:55 PM

Quite honestly, I think Kepler would have been axed by now if other observatory missions (e.g., TPF, SIM, etc.) had not been in such dire straits.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 15 2006, 04:20 AM

In that connection, there's a new, interesting little note from Ed Weiler attacking NASA for trying to oversell SIM as a regular "detector of Earthlike planets" ( http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/03/weilers_lament.html#more ):

"Former OSS colleagues...
"When we sold SIM, years ago, it was sold and designed as a machine that would primarily find gas giant planets, and -- if you were within a tiny, tiny fraction of the galaxy, namely within 30 light years of the Sun -- you had a shot of finding a few 3-Earth-mass rocky planets, maybe, if they exist.

"How did this suddenly get translated into 'SIM project will search for Earth-like planets orbiting nearby stars...' in the newly minted NASA Strategic Plan on page 12? Has physics changed? Is it different on the West Coast vs. the East Coast? Seems like a bit of a stretch of the truth considering most of the planets that a SIM will find are gas-giant sized. Again, since I started this program as Origins Director, got it funded and sold it year after year as AA/OSS, and I am an astronomer, I believe some forces are 'stretching' the truth here. Kepler finds Earth-like planets! I would hate to see that CRITICAL mission short-changed as the 'real' Earth finder and statistics builder.

"Just a plea for truth in advertising in these interesting times...Plus... if Kepler shows us that Earths are very rare, say 1 in a million stars... some might say we can forget SIM since it 'looks for Earth-like planets' in a tiny fraction of the galaxy!

"Just something to ponder as you consider how you market these things..."
________________________

Now, the presentations to the Earthlike Planets Strategic Mapping Workshop DID imply that Weiler is overstating his case -- they did present SIM as being "the true finder of nearby Earthlike planets", and TPF as just the "characterizer" of those located mostly by SIM.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/apio/pdf/earthlike/earthlike_minutes1.pdf :
"SIM will survey 250 dwarf stars of types A, F, G, K, and M within 15 parsecs, looking for planets of up to several Earth masses by astrometry. Planets of up to 3 times the Earth’s mass will be identified with a confidence of 5 sigma. Planets of one Earth mass will be identified with a confidence of 1 sigma. [Michael Shao said in Feb. 2005 that extending SIM's mission from 5 years to 10 years would allow it to detect 1.5 Earth-mass planets out to 10 parsecs with 5-sigma confidence -- Moomaw.] These results will provide a short list of high-priority stellar targets for TPF (the stars most likely to have Earth-like planets). SIM will also provide orbital phase data to aid in timing and orienting the TPF observations. SIM therefore enhances the efficiency of TPF, and estimates of this enhancement range from threefold to tenfold...Dr. Martin asked if the principal argument for SIM is its enhancement of TPF efficiency. Dr. Marcy replied that the significant technology challenges of TPF mean that SIM is also needed to protect TPF-C from falling below its science floor. Dr. Beichman added that SIM gives the planet-finding program robustness and direct measurement of planetary masses, in addition to increasing the efficiency of the TPF missions. In summarizing his argument for the value of SIM, Dr. Marcy said one could call SIM the terrestrial planet FINDER, whereas TPF is the terrestrial planet CHARACTERIZER."

http://astron.berkeley.edu/~gmarcy/marcy_japan.pdf :
"The simulations of SIM observations of Earth-mass planets show that 3 Earth-mass planets are detectable and 1.5 Earth-mass planets are marginally found at 5 pc. Thus, the SIM survey of 200 nearby stars will identify a subset that has planets of 3-10 Earth masses (should they be common) and another subset that is likely to have even lower mass planets, 1.5-3 Earth masses, albeit with some false alarm interlopers. SIM can thus produce an input sample of nearby stars that is enriched by about a factor of 3 in 1.5-3 Earth-mass planets over an original sample. Assuming, for example, that nu [the fraction of stars with earths in the habitable zone] is 0.1, it is easy to show that SIM will produce an output list of stars that is enriched by a factor of 3 in habitable earths over the original input sample of stars. Thus, SIM will provide TPF and Darwin with target stars having either strong or plausible evidence of rocky planets. SIM will also identify those stars that TPF and Darwin should avoid, notably those with a large planet near the habitable zone that renders any earths dynamically unstable...

"If nu is indeed ~10%, TPF/Darwin will be hard pressed to detect these few Earths because of their rarity and their faintness.... Moreover, for modestly inclined orbital planes, TPF/Darwin will miss planets located angularly within the diffraction-limited Inner Working Angle... A planet orbiting 1 AU from a star located 5 pc away will spend roughly 1/3 of its orbit inside the IWA, leaving it undetected. Thus if the occurrence of earths in habitable zones is of order 10%, SIM will triple the efficiency of TPF and Darwin both by identifying the likely host stars and by predicting the orbital phase during which the 'earth' is farthest from the glare of the host star."

But while SIM will thus be extremely useful in targeting the observations of TPF and greatly improving that mission's efficiency, its launch delays will seriously interfere with its ability to MEASURE nu -- the frequency of earths around Sunlike stars -- which is a critical value to know in deciding whether to make the first TPF the TPF-Coronagraph or the TPF-Interferometer, aka Darwin (which is much more sensitive and thus capable of surveying a much larger number of longer-range stars than TPF-C, but is also much more expensive). Thus Kepler is important in measuring nu to make that crucial decision years before SIM is even launched -- and thus, if we don't fly Kepler, we will certainly have to delay the launch of TPF by 5 years or so. Is this worth Kepler's half-billion-dollar cost? Kind of a judgement call.

Posted by: Jyril Mar 15 2006, 04:50 PM

Exactly. Kepler must fly. ESA has already cancelled its equivalent, the Eddington mission.

Posted by: Orlin Denkov Mar 16 2006, 12:32 PM

Interresting details in an Associated Press article: http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/14107840.htm

Is that "new evidence" the one which was mentionned http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000480/?
I really hope that the cancelation will be revised and Dawn will fly at last...

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 16 2006, 04:40 PM

Interesting, Orlin. Thanks for posting this.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Mar 16 2006, 06:16 PM

http://www.space.com/news/060316_dawn_mission.html
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer, Space.com
posted: 16 March 2006
12:30 p.m. ET

===============

"When pressed by scientists to clarify whether or not the Dawn mission has been restored, NASA Associate Administrator for Science, Mary Cleave, said NASA is responsive to Congressional language that dictates 'if we get to a certain percentage cost overrun we have to review a project. And if it gets to another percentage Congress will zero the money going in and we will be in this limbo with no money going in.'

"Another reply regarding the status of Dawn came from Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA’s solar system division in Washington, D.C.

"I really can’t get into the details on Dawn,' Dantzler told the LPSC gathering, but noted that the cancellation 'is under review by our management.' Because of that fact, he added, it would not be appropriate to get into specifics.

"The cost to stand down Dawn was slated not to be more than $5 million dollars and hasn’t been, Dantzler said. 'Continuing Dawn is significantly more,' he said.

"Dantzler said that termination of a mission or a budget cut 'is a very serious issue,' with NASA doing everything it can not do that.

"In terms of the technical problems of Dawn, Dantzler said that 'it would not be wise to go into technical detail.'"

Posted by: dvandorn Mar 16 2006, 11:19 PM

All of the issues aside, I would just *love* it if I were to have reason to start a new thread here entitled "Nasa Dawn Asteroid Mission Told To 'Stand Back Up'...



-the other Doug

Posted by: helvick Mar 17 2006, 01:36 AM

The applause would definitely be echoed over here on this side of the atlantic.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Mar 17 2006, 02:51 AM

OK let me make a few calls and see what I can do.

Posted by: Orlin Denkov Mar 17 2006, 07:23 AM

If we really can do something (calls, or whatever else) - we really must do it
Dawn have many and many supporters and deserve to fly - for our pleasure, and for the science achievments

Posted by: Bob Shaw Mar 17 2006, 08:40 AM

We might be better to push for a pair of SMART-1 follow-ups in the form of Vesta Express and Ceres Express, with some US instruments aboard (well, they're already built, so they could be sold to ESA as scrap). Of course, somebody would have to build a magnetometer - JAXA, perhaps?

Bob Shaw

Posted by: algorimancer Mar 17 2006, 03:33 PM

I would think that throwing together something like NEAR - ion propulsion, basic camera and spectrometer, ought to be relatively inexpensive. Although this may be a little far out for solar power, which introduces all sorts of problems.

Posted by: Mariner9 Mar 17 2006, 06:21 PM

I can't beleive what I'm reading.

I seem to be hearing: "it's easy to put together an asteroid mission with ion drive, anyone can do it for cheap"

Uh.... wasn't that the basic problem here in the first place? They thought they could just take hardware off of Deep Space 1, modify it slightly, and off to Vesta Dawn will go?

I could have sworn that things didn't quite work out that smoothly, and Dawn just get canceled for budgetary and technical problems.

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 23 2006, 09:46 PM

According to Keith (shudder) Cowing, the decision on whether to zap Dawn permanently is coming up in a few hours:
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2006/03/dawn_mission_re.html

However, hope never dies -- not only is the Dawn team already planning their followup mission, they've NAMED it:
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/COSPAR2006/00375/COSPAR2006-A-00375.pdf

Posted by: djellison Mar 23 2006, 10:59 PM

(before reading the PDF)
If they've called it DUSK - I'm going to vomit

Doug

Posted by: BruceMoomaw Mar 24 2006, 12:33 AM

"EVE" is apparently an acronym, but I have no idea for what.

Also notice that they say, that besides Hygeia, it would go to at least one member of an unnamed "dynamical family of asteroids". In Russell's previous description of it (without naming it), he had specified Psyche as its other stop. I can't find any other Google references to this thing.

Posted by: Toma B Mar 24 2006, 06:23 AM

According to NASA watch : "NASA HQ has decided - that there won't be a decision about Dawn's fate - Today."
Well as somebody here sad , no news is good news for Dawn.
Maybe there is still a chance...I would be personally very happy if Dawn get "stand back up" decision...

BTW: Is NASA watch reliable site that can be thrusted?

Posted by: djellison Mar 24 2006, 08:31 AM

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