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Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity
djellison
post Jan 11 2006, 07:40 PM
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Stardust info up on the library - and DI with a big library here
http://discovery.larc.nasa.gov/discovery/d...ct_package.html


It would seem they intend to beef up the stardust info after the divert manouver

Doug
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 23 2006, 11:52 PM
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The draft agenda for the Febrary 2, 2006, preproposal conferences is now online. Note also that a few documents in the Discovery Program Library (DPL) have been updated, as well as the Q&A page.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 24 2006, 05:53 PM
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This post is tough to pigeonhole in any one distinct forum/thread, so I'll place it here.

A new report has been released by the National Research Council:

Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences
Committee on Principal-Investigator-Led Missions in the Space Sciences, National Research Council

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Jan 24 2006, 05:54 PM
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 24 2006, 08:52 PM
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This is a pretty interesting report, especially Chapter 6.

By the way, for those who are unfamiliar with online books from the National Academies Press (NAP), note that NAP is offering the entire report as a single free downloadable PDF. Just click on the "Download" button under "Free PDFs" and answer truthfully or untruthfully the few questions asked. This will set a cookie on your browser to download the entire 135-page PDF rather than having to skim the report page by page in the "Open Book" online format.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jan 24 2006, 10:35 PM
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Now, THAT's a useful piece of information, Alex. These things have driven me mad in the past.

Unfortunately, while the last chapter claims to set new guidelines on when a competitively selected mission should or shouldn't get cancelled for breaking its cost cap, it doesn't seem to provide any information that could tell us whether they're recommending the cancellation of "Dawn".
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jan 25 2006, 12:17 PM
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Regarding possible solicitations to the latest Discovery AO: I've been looking for stuff on a possible resubmission of CONTOUR, and have found a piece by Dunham and Farquhar in the May 2004 Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences on the history of trajectory planning for APL's various deep space missions ( http://highorbits.jhuapl.edu/aplmisns.doc ). Be warned that this thing takes forever to download and display -- apparently due to all the drawings in it (plus one reproduction of NEAR's last photo of Eros' surface, with a basketball stuck in it to show how remarkably fine-scale that shot actually was).

At its very end, however, we have a mention of APL's definite plan to submit CONTOUR 2 to the "next Discovery AO" -- which I presume was the abortive one for Discovery 11 -- and a chart of several possible multiple-comet missions for it. All these assume a launch in Oct. 2007, followed by a flyby of Grigg-Skjellerup the following March -- which can't be done now, since the mission if selected this time can't possibly be ready that early. But they then include 2 Earth flybys, with the second in July 2010 -- which COULD be replaced by a direct launch from Earth on that date -- followed by a flyby of Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova in August 2011. After that there are several alternative mission continuations that would allow flyby of one more comet, and one that would allow flybys of two more: Finlay in Dec. 2014 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (the fragmented comet that would have been the original CONTOUR's second stop) in Sept. 2022. This last scenario would be followed by another Earth flyby in July 2027 that could presumably be used to set up a fourth comet flyby later, if the craft is still working.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 25 2006, 05:27 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 25 2006, 12:17 PM)
At its very end, however, we have a mention of APL's definite plan to submit CONTOUR 2 to the "next Discovery AO" -- which I presume was the abortive one for Discovery 11 -- and a chart of several possible multiple-comet missions for it.

If a "CONTOUR-2" is proposed and selected under the Discovery 2006 AO, and if the "Dawn re-rising" somehow materializes, I think a reasonable person might suspect the Discovery Program mission line is simply morphing into an asteroid/comet exploration program.
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Phil Stooke
post Jan 25 2006, 05:50 PM
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Alex said "I think a reasonable person might suspect the Discovery Program mission line is simply morphing into an asteroid/comet exploration program."

I see what you mean, but we do need to see a good number of these bodies to understand their diversity, and the number of things that can be done under the cost cap is somewhat limited.

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JRehling
post Jan 25 2006, 05:55 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 25 2006, 04:17 AM)
All these assume a launch in Oct. 2007, followed by a flyby of Grigg-Skjellerup the following March -- which can't be done now, since the mission if selected this time can't possibly be ready that early.  But they then include 2 Earth flybys, with the second in July 2010 -- which COULD be replaced by a direct launch from Earth on that date -- followed by a flyby of Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova in August 2011.  After that there are several alternative mission continuations that would allow flyby of one more comet, and one that would allow flybys of two more: Finlay in Dec. 2014 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 (the fragmented comet that would have been the original CONTOUR's second stop) in Sept. 2022.  This last scenario would be followed by another Earth flyby in July 2027 that could presumably be used to set up a fourth comet flyby later, if the craft is still working.
*


When you say that an Earth flyby could be replaced by a direct launch from Earth, are you relaying a comment in the document? Energy considerations might mean that an Earth flyby accomplishes something that a direct launch could not.

I don't have the desire or the means to impugn the research that went into these mission alternatives, but the complexity of balancing scientific objectives with the very large number of possible comet trajectories makes me want to see a very large effort to generate comet/asteroid mission planning software, to get the most good out of the hardware and mission costs. As a computer scientist, I suspect that even a very good effort might miss some mission plans that are even better. And the ratio of cost/science seems to be better for ground planning than mission operations.

This sounds like a complaint in the absence of facts... it's really just a hunch that more resources for planning might be in order than anyone in the proposal business alone is going to muster before the first funds have been dispersed.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 25 2006, 06:28 PM
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QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jan 25 2006, 05:50 PM)
I see what you mean, but we do need to see a good number of these bodies to understand their diversity...

I don't disagree, Phil. However, if this rationale is used to justify the Discovery Program being top-heavy with (or dominated by) asteroid/comet missions, then NASA should at least unequivocally state so. As I'm sure you know, proposers who wish to go after other solar system targets under Discovery expend a lot of resources putting together proposals that, assuming the preceding sentence is true, really don't stand a chance.

QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Jan 25 2006, 05:50 PM)
...and the number of things that can be done under the cost cap is somewhat limited.

True, asteroid/comet missions are usually relatively cheaper than most, and as many have stated about Discovery's cost caps and future missions, "All the low-hanging fruit has probably been picked."
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volcanopele
post Jan 25 2006, 07:27 PM
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QUOTE (AlexBlackwell @ Jan 25 2006, 10:27 AM)
If a "CONTOUR-2" is proposed and selected under the Discovery 2006 AO, and if the "Dawn re-rising" somehow materializes, I think a reasonable person might suspect the Discovery Program mission line is simply morphing into an asteroid/comet exploration program.
*

What else is there? Mars has its own low-cost program (though does that include Phobos/Deimos, thinking of Aladdin here...). I guess there were a few Venus ideas last time around (can't seem to remember, VESPER?). Mercury has a mission already on its way. The outer planets are beyond the reach of this program. So that leaves...asteroids and comets. Oh our moon, I forgot about that...


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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 25 2006, 07:34 PM
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QUOTE (volcanopele @ Jan 25 2006, 07:27 PM)
What else is there?  Mars has its own low-cost program (though does that include Phobos/Deimos, thinking of Aladdin here...).  I guess there were a few Venus ideas last time around (can't seem to remember, VESPER?).  Mercury has a mission already on its way.  The outer planets are beyond the reach of this program.  So that leaves...asteroids and comets.  Oh our moon, I forgot about that...
Aside from Phobos/Deimos, my personal favorite, which falls under Discovery's bailiwick, there are also opportunities for solar-type exploration missions (e.g., Genesis) or astronomical ones like Kepler.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jan 25 2006, 10:16 PM
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There are at least three Venus Discovery proposals coming up in this round:

(1) VESPER will be resubmitted -- despite the fact that Venus Express should achieve many of its goals. It will be jazzed up by adding the little "VAMP" entry probe that was separately proposed once before. (VAMP's descent camera, which could have provided only very fuzzy high-altitude views, will be replaced by an improved GCMS).

(2) Poor Kevin Baines -- having submitted VESAT five times and struck out repeatedly (sometimes by heartbreakingly close margins) -- has given up on it and will be submitting a cloud-level balloon with a GCMS for protracted atmospheric and cloud studies.

(3) Bruce Campbell will be proposing "VISTA", an orbiter with the kind of subsurface radar sounder that got kicked off Venus Express due to lack of funds (plus a radar altimeter that's higher-resolution than Magellan's, which might allow much better gravity mapping). It may actually be the same "VENSIS" sounder planned for Venus Express -- that is, a clone of MARSIS. He's very skeptical about the ability to age-date Venusian rocks because of their high temperature, and thinks that the stratigraphy which a subsurface radar sounder can provide may be the only way to properly sequence the geological events that actually happened on Venus -- including settling the major question of whether it really did undergo catastrophic resurfacing. He told me at the VEXAG meeting that he simply considers this higher-priority scientifically right now than getting higher-resolution SAR images of Venus, which he could have done if he had instead proposed a Venusian copy of his "Mars Scout Radar" proposal.

I don't think the Discovery program is being deliberately "morphed into a comet/asteroid program" -- but I do think that they are finally running out of really low-cost Solar System missions that can do really good new science (at least until new technologies gradually lower the cost of the missions again), and so small bodies are likely to dominate the program more and more. Certainly, given the need to sample as wide a variety of asteroids, comets and KBOs as possible, missions to visit multiple small-body targets would seem a good, cost-effective choice for the Discovery Program at this point.

In any case, Bush's lunar initiative has now devoured all possible Discovery lunar proposals -- and the Mars Scout program, from its start, included all Phobos/Deimos missions (thus infuriating Jeffrey Bell, who admittedly infuriates easily). As for extrasolar-planet astronomy satellites, keep in mind that Kepler's cost has mushroomed to over $500 million -- with NASA's new Universe Division neverthless continuing to support it on the grounds that it's now an integral part of the extrasolar-planet search program (which, as Andy Dantzler said, means that "I don't have to worry about the thing anymore.") If later extrasolar-planet Discovery proposals are likely to undergo comparable cost overruns, this of course reduces their chances of being picked. It will be interesting to see whether they get enough science out of the damaged Genesis samples to rule out any thoughts of a reflight -- especially since oxygen and nitrogen measurements were both its highest scientific priorities and the ones most seriously contaminated by the crash.

But those last two categories raise the question of whether it might be better for NASA to combine ALL its competitively-picked space science missions within the same cost band into a unified competition, regardless of whether they happen to be Solar System, astronomy, or Sun-Earth Connection studies. (I've already mentioned that the possibility has been raised of incorporating Solar Probe into the New Frontiers program, since it's in the same price range.) This would seem to be more scientifically cost-effective overall.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Jan 25 2006, 10:24 PM
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Answering John Rehling's question: no, there's no specific reference in the Dunham piece to a direct 2010 launch from Earth being capable of sending CONTOUR 2 to Comet "HMP" (I flatly refuse to respell its name again) in 2011. But the flyby would be only 0.08 AU from Earth and only 0.04 AU closer to the Sun than Earth is, so I presume it could easily be done by direct launch with a small booster.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_*
post Jan 25 2006, 11:42 PM
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QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Jan 25 2006, 10:16 PM)
...and the Mars Scout program, from its start, included all Phobos/Deimos missions...

My understanding is that exploration of Phobos and Deimos is not covered under the Mars Exploration Program (MEP), which also constrains and guides the science objectives of Mars Scout mission investigations -- at least that was the case under the first Mars Scout AO.

This post has been edited by AlexBlackwell: Jan 25 2006, 11:58 PM
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