Author: NASA Official

WASHINGTON — An independent review warned of potential cost overruns on a future major NASA Earth science mission, prompting NASA to consider removing some instruments from it.

NASA is in the process of conducting reviews known as Key Decision Point (KDP) A for three elements of its Earth System Observatory line of missions: Atmosphere Observing System (AOS), Mass Change, and Surface Biology and Geology. The KDP-A reviews would allow the proposed missions to move into Phase A of initial development.

NASA, though, delayed the KDP-A review for AOS, which had been scheduled for December, after receiving an independent review of the Earth System Observatory effort commissioned by NASA in June and completed in October. That review concluded that AOS, which will include satellites both in polar and mid-inclination orbits, would cost $2.4 billion, $500 million more than the project’s own estimate.

“That is a warning that got a lot of attention at the agency level,” said Julie Robinson, deputy director of NASA’s Earth science division, during a town hall meeting about the mission at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union Dec. 16. “It’s a red flag.”

A major factor for the cost growth in the opinion of the independent review board (IRB) is the low technical maturity of two instruments planned for it, a dual-band Doppler radar that would operate at Ka and W bands, and a high spectral resolution (HSRL) lidar. The radar would enable measurements of clouds and precipitation, while the lidar would characterize aerosols in the atmosphere.

While the independent review suggested saving money by replacing the dual-band with a single-band one, and the HSRL lidar with a more conventional lidar, Robinson said it was too early in the development of AOS to make that decision.

“We really need more time to study it,” she said, something that can be done during Phase A of AOS. That includes studies on building the instruments in-house versus procuring them, and requests for information to assess industry’s capability to provide those instruments.

NASA now plans to hold the KDP-A review in January, a delay she said was primarily intended to coordinate work among centers involved in AOS as well as international partners. Canada and Japan are providing their own spacecraft for AOS, along with instruments from France.

The prospect of removing the dual-band radar and HSRL lidar had alarmed scientists, who worried it would significantly reduce the scientific productivity of AOS. Robinson agreed, but noted the agency had not made any decisions about those instruments. “The IRB report did discuss that these descopes are significant, and we recognize that as well. This is not what you were hoping to get out of this mission,” she said. “We have to do these Phase A studies.”

However, she said that the agency needed to find some way to reduce the cost of AOS to avoid cuts elsewhere in the overall Earth System Observatory. “If it would really be half a billion dollars more than is budgeted to do AOS,” she said, “then we would need to drop another mission.”

The independent review concluded the costs of the other two missions, Mass Change and Surface Biology and Geology, were close to project estimates: $454 million for Mass Change and $752 million for Surface Biology and Geology. The review, though, warned that Mass Change, which it described as a “near-copy” of the current GRACE-FO mission, carries risks from using that design and doesn’t improve on resolution and sampling as recommended by the Earth science decadal survey.

NASA initiated the Earth System Observatory effort in 2021, using it as the umbrella for the missions that will implement the five “designated observables” from the decadal survey: aerosols; clouds, convection and precipitation; mass change in snow, ice and water; surface biology and geology; and surface deformation and change. AOS will handle the aerosols and clouds, convection and precipitation observables.

The agency has not started formal planning yet for the mission to implement the fifth designated observable, surface deformation and change. Instead, NASA will use data from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission scheduled for launch in 2024 to support science involving surface deformation and change.

TAMPA, Fla. —Iridium unveiled chip maker Qualcomm Jan. 5 as the partner behind plans to connect smartphones to its satellite constellation this year.

U.S.-based Qualcomm has developed a product called Snapdragon Satellite, which it said can be added to Android smartphones and other devices to support two-way communications via Iridium satellites.

Potential uses include emergency SOS services, SMS texts, and other low-bandwidth messaging applications in areas outside terrestrial networks and where Iridium’s global constellation is licensed to operate.

Any emergency messages would be routed through response teams run by Garmin, a GPS technology specialist and longtime Iridium partner.

Jordan Hassin, Iridium’s executive director of communication, acknowledged widespread speculation in the run-up to the announcement about South Korean smartphone maker Samsung being its direct-to-smartphone partner.

At one point Iridium was also rumored to be working with Apple, which in September announced a partnership with Iridium’s rival Globalstar for services currently limited to SOS.

However, rather than partnering with a specific smartphone vendor, Hassin said Iridium chose to team up with Qualcomm to enable its technology in multiple smartphone brands that run Android, the most popular operating system for mobile phones.

In addition to supporting hardware development, Qualcomm has an agreement to sell the service to companies on Iridium’s behalf.

Qualcomm’s chipsets are already commonly used in Samsung, Motorola, and other smartphone brands worldwide. 

To connect to Iridium’s 66-strong constellation in low Earth orbit, smartphone makers would need to integrate the latest generation of a Qualcomm chipset that is geared toward premium phones.

Hassin said “several” Android customers are already integrating Snapdragon Satellite, with the first products expected to be released in the second half of 2023.

In a media briefing, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said it is still “being worked out” how and if smartphone customers would be charged for using its satellite-enabled services.

Apple has said it will offer satellite-enabled SOS services on its range of iPhone 14 smartphones for free for two years.

Francesco Grilli, vice president of product management at Qualcomm Technologies, told the briefing the company successfully demonstrated Snapdragon Satellite Jan. 4 in Las Vegas as part of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

He said the company was able to send basic text messages in an average of three seconds with a smartphone during the demo. 

While the service will initially target smartphones, the companies said they are considering expanding to other devices, including laptops, tablets, vehicles, and small Internet of Things machines.

Desch said the company could also consider upgrading its capabilities to add higher bandwidth services later, in line with other businesses that are also looking to enter the direct-to-smartphone market.

“We certainly have aspirations to go well beyond where we are today,” he said.

In addition to Apple and Globalstar, other companies seeking to provide direct-to-smartphone services from LEO include SpaceX in partnership with T-Mobile, AST SpaceMobile, Lynk Global, and Sateliot.

In July, Qualcomm announced plans with Swedish telecoms equipment maker Ericsson and French aerospace company Thales to demonstrate 5G on smartphones via LEO satellites.

However, Grilli said these plans are still in the research and development phase, and any commercial services would require spectrum and hundreds of new satellites to become a reality.

He said it is unlikely Qualcomm’s venture with Ericsson and Thales would “see any product before 2026 at the earliest,” and that is optimistic.

TAMPA, Fla. — Canada’s NorthStar Earth and Space said Jan. 5 it has raised $35 million ahead of plans to deploy its first three satellites this year for tracking objects in orbit.

U.S.-based private equity firm Cartesian Capital led the Series C funding round, which NorthStar CEO Stewart Bain said brings the total amount the company has raised to nearly $100 million.

NorthStar aims to use proceeds to accelerate plans for a constellation of 24 Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites, which would scan out from low Earth orbit (LEO) to track other satellites and debris. 

The company hopes to track objects as small as one centimeter in LEO, about seven centimeters in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and “somewhere between 50 and 40” centimeters even farther out in geostationary orbit (GEO), Bain said in an interview.

Spire Global is building the first three satellites for NorthStar, each the size of 16 cubesats, for a launch around the middle of 2023 with Virgin Orbit.

Bain said it had not been decided whether these satellites would be deployed from Virgin Orbit’s base in California, or be part of the air-launch company’s first batch of missions from England.

NorthStar’s contract with Spire includes options for up to 30 satellites, and Bain said the company is now looking at “when to pull the trigger” on the next set of spacecraft.

“It’ll probably be another set of three,” he said, “and then after that we’ll probably do them in blocks of six.”

There “is an argument to be made of letting the first few get up, see how they operate, and then pushing the button on the next set,” he added, “or leading that by a certain amount of time” to help ensure the timely delivery of parts amid the industry’s supply chain issues.

The first three satellites have already secured commitments from a mix of commercial and government customers, according to Bain, although he declined to disclose them.

He said a U.S. government pilot project that picked NorthStar and five other commercial firms in December to prototype space traffic data platforms helped highlight commercial SSA opportunities and attract business.

“It’s not like we weren’t already contacting both government and private sector operators,” he said, “but that really got people to wake up and say, wow, here we go.”

Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES last year announced plans to use NorthStar’s data to help manage its fleet of satellites in GEO and MEO.

Bain said a space development fund supported by SES and Luxembourg’s government participated in NorthStar’s Series C funding round.

Other investors included the government of Quebec and a family-owned Canadian technology fund called Telesystem Space.

The Oracle spacecraft will carry an optical payload made by Leidos and AFRL’s green propellant experiment for a two-year demonstration

WASHINGTON — General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems won a contract from Advanced Space to build a satellite that the Air Force Research Laboratory plans to launch to deep space in 2025.

General Atomics, based in San Diego, California, announced Jan. 5 it will produce an ESPA-class satellite bus, integrate and test payloads for Advanced Space, the prime contractor for AFRL’s Oracle experiment. 

AFRL’s Space Vehicles Directorate in November awarded Advanced Space a $72 million contract to develop a spacecraft for the Oracle mission, intended to monitor deep space, far beyond Earth’s orbit. 

The Oracle spacecraft will carry an optical payload made by Leidos and AFRL’s green propellant experiment for a two-year demonstration. 

 Oracle will seek to detect objects and demonstrate spacecraft positioning and navigation techniques far beyond geosynchronous Earth orbit, in the vicinity of Earth-moon Lagrange Point 1, about 200,000 miles from Earth. The GEO belt is about 22,000 miles above Earth.

Scott Forney, president of GA-EMS, said the platform selected for Oracle, the ESPA Grande, is a modular ring shaped bus that the company also is using to build a weather imaging satellite for the U.S. Space Force.

“The AFRL Oracle spacecraft program is intended to demonstrate advanced techniques to detect and track objects in the region near the Moon that cannot be viewed optically from the Earth or from satellites in traditional orbits,” he said in a statement.

Gregg Burgess, vice president of GA-EMS space systems, said the cislunar region “continues to be a strategic area of focus for us.” The company in 2021 won a $22 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to design a small nuclear reactor for a demonstration of nuclear thermal propulsion in cislunar space.

WASHINGTON — After technical and licensing delays, Virgin Orbit is gearing up for its first launch from the United Kingdom as soon as Jan. 9.

A maritime navigation warning issued Jan. 4 identified a zone for hazardous operations for “rocket launching” off the coast of Ireland late Jan. 9, with a backup date of Jan. 18. The zone is consistent with the drop zone for Virgin Orbit’s “Start Me Up” LauncherOne mission flying out of Spaceport Cornwall in England.

Virgin Orbit spokesperson Allison Patch confirmed to SpaceNews that the navigation warning was for the upcoming launch, but said the company was not yet ready to formally announce a launch date for the mission. “All launch partners are currently working towards launch fairly soon,” she said, with a confirmation of the company’s launch plans expected in the coming days.

A separate marine notice issued by Ireland’s Department of Transport Jan. 4 listed a similar hazard area explicitly linked to the Virgin Orbit launch. In addition to the Jan. 9 and 18 launch dates, the Irish notice including potential launches on Jan. 13, 15, 19 and 20.

The hazard notices are in the event of a launch mishap involving the air-launched LauncherOne system. “Where the launch attempt proceeds as planned, no debris will enter the marine hazard area,” the Irish notice stated. “However, there is a low probability for the vehicle to produce dangerous debris if a mishap were to occur.”

Virgin Orbit had planned to conduct the Start Me Up mission last fall, flying its Boeing 747 aircraft, launch vehicle and related systems to Spaceport Cornwall in October. At one point, the company targeted a mid-December launch, only to postpone the launch days later, citing “additional technical work” on the launch system and a pending launch license from the U.K.’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

The CAA awarded that launch license to Virgin Orbit Dec. 21, clearing the final regulatory hurdles for the launch. “At this time, all of Virgin Orbit’s systems are green for launch,” Dan Hart, chief executive of Virgin Orbit, said in a Dec. 22 statement. The company reported that both the vehicle and its payloads were in “good condition” to launch, but said only that a launch date would be set in the “coming weeks.”

The Start Me Up mission will place into orbit seven payloads from a variety of customers, including the U.K. Ministry of Defence, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the first satellite for the government of Oman.

TAMPA, Fla. — Iridium has entered into a service provider agreement with a company widely expected to be Samsung to connect its satellites to smartphones.

The U.S.-based satellite operator said it is due to be paid royalties, development and network usage fees from the deal in a Dec. 30 regulatory filing that provided no financial details or timings.

“To protect each company’s investment in this newly developed technology, the overall arrangements include substantial recoupment payments from each company for commercializing a similar capability,” Iridium said.

The announcement comes after Iridium said in July that it had signed a development contract with a company to enable its satellite technology in smartphones. 

Iridium said both agreements are still contingent upon successfully developing the technology.

Samsung plans to use Iridium’s constellation to bring satellite connectivity to its range of Galaxy S23 range of smartphones this year, South Korean media publication ETNews reported Nov. 24.

Unlike the direct-to-smartphone service Apple launched Nov. 15 with Iridium’s rival Globalstar, ETNews said Samsung’s service would extend beyond basic SOS messaging to enable texts and low-resolution images to be sent outside terrestrial networks. 

While Iridium and South Korea-based Samsung have declined to comment on the ETNews report, Lee Seung-gwan, a senior executive at Samsung Electronics’ communications team, said a “smartphone-satellite connection is something we should pursue, obviously.”

The partnership would make sense for Iridium following Apple’s Globalstar tie-up, according to William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, who expects the Galaxy S23 line-up to be released in February.

Globalstar’s willingness to allocate 85% of its satellite network to Apple helped seal its deal with the company behind one of the world’s most successful smartphones. 

But that level of commitment was not feasible for Iridium, DiPalma said in a note to investors Nov. 25, because thousands of blue chip customers including the U.S. Department of Defense currently rely on its network.

Even still, Iridium’s $3 billion 66-strong constellation is “considered significantly more advanced” than Globalstar’s network of 24 satellites, he said.

“In our view, the Iridium smartphone functionality will be more expansive than the Apple-GlobalStar iPhone14 partnership,” he added.

During Iridium’s latest earnings call Oct. 20, CEO Matt Desch hinted that “you can do a lot more than just push an emergency button” with a smartphone connected to a satellite. 

Apple has kept its future direct-to-smartphone plans close to its chest as it invests $450 million to upgrade Globalstar’s network.

Meanwhile, other established and startup satellite companies are preparing to offer more than just basic emergency messaging when they launch their direct-to-smartphone services in the coming years.

Texas-based AST SpaceMobile is preparing to start deploying operational satellites from late 2023 to bring 5G connectivity directly to smartphones.

Samsung Next, Samsung’s investment arm, was an early investor in AST SpaceMobile.

DiPalma expects an Iridium partnership with Samsung would contribute $20 million in revenues in its first year, although “that estimate may be conservative.”

SpaceNews correspondent Park Si-soo contributed to this story from Seoul, South Korea.

WASHINGTON — Airbus Defence and Space is joining a commercial space station project led by Voyager Space, a move that could potentially make it easier for European governments to use the station after the retirement of the International Space Station.

Denver-based Voyager Space announced Jan. 4 a partnership with Airbus on its Starlab commercial space station project. Airbus will provide “technical design support and expertise” for Starlab, the companies said, but did not disclose additional details about the partnership or financial terms.

Voyager Space announced plans for Starlab in October 2021 working with Lockheed Martin. Starlab, as described at the time, would feature in inflatable module, docking node and bus, capable of hosting up to four astronauts at a time.

Voyager Space, through its subsidiary Nanoracks, won one of three NASA Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development, or CLD, awards from NASA in December 2021. The $160 million Space Act Agreement is intended to support design work on Starlab as NASA prepares to transition from the ISS to commercial space stations by the end of the decade.

That transition will also involve NASA’s international partners on the ISS, something that both Airbus and Voyager Space officials alluded to in the announcement of their partnership. “Working with Airbus we will expand Starlab’s ecosystem to serve the European Space Agency (ESA) and its member state space agencies to continue their microgravity research in LEO,” Dylan Taylor, chairman and chief executive of Voyager Space, said in the announcement.

“This collaboration is an important step in making Starlab a reality, providing a foundation for long-lasting European and American leadership in space,” said Jean-Marc Nasr, executive vice president of space systems at Airbus Defence and Space, in the same statement.

ISS partners have pondered how they will make use of commercial space stations run by American companies. Current ISS arrangements, where space agencies barter for services, are unlikely to apply to commercial facilities, where agencies may have to work directly with the station’s operator rather than through NASA.

“We need to find ways to work together, certainly in other ways than we did before,” said Peter Gräf, director of applications and science at the German space agency DLR, during a panel discussion at the AIAA ASCEND conference in October. “There are a lot of options available and the main players are in heavy discussions on that.”

Direct payments from European governments to American companies for use of commercial space stations could be politically problematic. “The taxpayers in Europe don’t want to pay directly to private American companies,” said Nicolas Maubert, space counselor at the French Embassy in the U.S. and representative of the French space agency CNES in the U.S., at the conference panel. Those concerns may be alleviated, though, if companies from Europe and other ISS partners are involved with the stations.

ESA officials, who are beginning work on their post-ISS plans, are aware of those concerns. “Shall we pay directly to commercial providers in the U.S.? We can, of course, but that is euros directly supporting U.S. industry. Is that something Europe wants to do, that our member states want to do?” said Frank De Winne, head of ESA’s European Astronaut Center, in an interview during ESA’s ministerial council meeting in Paris in November.

How ESA will deal with commercial space stations is something the agency will study leading up to its next ministerial council meeting in 2025, but he said one option would be for ESA to fund development of a European crewed vehicle that could service those stations.

“If we talk to the commercial providers today, to the CLDs that are being funded by NASA, they all tell us the same thing: they are interested in transportation,” he said. “For them to keep their costs low on transportation, they want competition. It’s as simple as that.”

Airbus is not the first European company to be involved in a commercial space station project. Thales Alenia Space is building modules for Axiom Space that will initially be installed on the ISS but eventually be detached to form a commercial space station.

HELSINKI — China is aiming to expand the use of its coastal Wenchang spaceport to both allow a greater overall launch rate and establish new facilities needed for crewed lunar missions.

The Wenchang Satellite Launch Center was completed in 2014 and has since allowed China to launch its new generation kerolox and cryogenic rockets. These have in turn enabled the country to launch interplanetary and lunar missions and construct and supply its Tiangong space station.

Now though the spaceport is being expanded to additionally facilitate commercial launches and the growth of China’s commercial space sector and, eventually, launch a new-generational crew launch vehicle and the super heavy-lift Long March 9 rocket. 

The development is an apparent part of long term plans for China to upgrade its overall space capabilities.

“In the near future, Wenchang will see its launch frequency go from between six to eight times a year, to 20 or 30 times a year,” Zhong Wen’an, chief engineer of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center which oversees Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, told CCTV Dec. 31.

“This is not only a change in quantity but also one in quality. We are also going to add more sites for [the launch of] human moon-landing missions, heavy rockets and commercial ones.” Zhong said.

The crew launcher is expected to have a test launch around 2026, and a pair of the rockets could support a short-term human lunar landing mission before 2030. 

The Long March 9 is planned for use in construction of China’s ILRS lunar base plan and other space infrastructure projects, including space-based solar power plans.

More immediately however, progress on the commercial launch site can be seen from both aerial and satellite imagery. Wenchang has already attracted a number of launch and other space-related companies to establish facilities in the area.

Construction of the Hainan commercial launch centre continues apace. https://t.co/o6Ml8rSBbs

— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) December 29, 2022

China has three inland spaceports at Jiuquan in the northwest, Xichang in the southwest and Taiyuan in north China. Jiuquan has recently been expanded to facilitate both launches of commercial solid rockets and new methane-liquid oxygen rockets. 

The country has also begun launching from mobile platforms from the Yellow Sea, supported by infrastructure developed near Haiyang, Shandong province.

Wenchang however has a number of advantages, including the lowest latitude of any of China’s spaceports. It is also accessible by sea, allowing large diameter rocket components to be delivered there. 

China’s inland launch sites are limited in the size of rocket they can launch due to a reliance on the national railway system and its capacities. They also create debris issues downrange due to falling spent rocket stages.

China’s largest rockets, the Long March 5 and 5B, launch from Wenchang. These launch vehicles have allowed China to launch its first interplanetary mission, Tianwen-1, a first lunar sample return mission, and launch the roughly 22-ton modules that make up the Tiangong space station.

SAN FRANCISCO – A bootcamp aimed at helping startups navigate the space sector’s complex regulatory landscape is coming to New Mexico.

The Space Regulatory Bootcamp, backed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory and SpaceWERX, is scheduled for Feb. 21-23 at Q Station, a collaboration center for New Mexico’s space industry in Albuquerque.

“Many companies need a lot of help understanding what is required if you’re going to do business with the federal government,” Gabe Mounce, director of AFRL’s Outreach and Tech Engagement Office, and SpaceWERX deputy director, told SpaceNews. “For instance, export laws are very important if you’re going to try to get a government contract, even a Small Business Innovation Research or Small Business Technology Transfer contract.”

In addition to export control, topics to be covered in the Space Regulatory Bootcamp, being organized by Washington-based Aegis Trade Law, include cybersecurity, foreign investment, crowdfunding, government licensing and federal contracting regulations.

“A lot of the work that we’ve done as a law firm has been educating our clients,” said Jack Shelton, Aegis co-founder and partner. “That’s what spawned the desire to put together a curriculum and start getting people educated on this stuff.”

Shelton, along with a group of space attorneys in partnership with AFRL, also are establishing the Association of Commercial Space Professionals, a public benefit company to offer affordable regulatory and legal resources for space startups.

Recent declines in launch costs and technological innovations like miniature electronic components and additive manufacturing have lowered the barriers to entry for space-related startups. Government agencies, eager to take advantage of commercial space innovation, have established incubators, accelerators and financing programs to help the startups succeed.

“It now feels like every entrepreneur who has ever tried to do something in any other sector is pivoting that product or service to space in some capacity, which is amazing,” Mounce said. “But that also means a lot of companies and founders don’t understand how they might be crossways with the U.S. if they are not careful in how they progress through their company establishment.”

One of the Space Regulatory Bootcamp sessions, for example, will focus on the important differences between pitching a business plan to the government versus pitching to investors, Shelton said.

While the first Space Regulatory Bootcamp was conceived as a pilot program, “I suspect because of the demand we are going to keep doing this,” Mounce said. “In fact, I’ve already been pushing the team figure out how we evolve the model after this pilot.”

Participants in the first Space Regulatory Bootcamp will pay $900 for the three-day meeting.

“We want to make sure it’s affordable,” Shelton said, “but also to make sure that we’re able to cover our costs.”

Correction: The Association of Commercial Space Professionals is a public benefit company, not a nonprofit. 

WASHINGTON — Despite a small funding increase for 2023, NASA’s planetary science programs still face “significant stress” financially that contributed to the delay of one mission and could push back the start of others.

NASA received $3.2 billion for planetary science in the fiscal year 2023 omnibus spending bill signed into law Dec. 29. That was about $80 million more than what the agency received for planetary science in 2022 and $40 million above its request for 2023.

That increase, though, may do little to address some of the challenges NASA has been facing with current and future missions. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s planetary science division, outlined those issues in presentations last month to the agency’s Planetary Science Advisory Committee and at a town hall during the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

Among those challenges are ongoing impacts from the pandemic. “There have been some substantial costs in order to accommodate the impacts from COVID,” she said at the AGU meeting. Those costs, she said, had to be absorbed from within the planetary science budget.

There have also been supply chain issues for missions in development, along with inflation and higher labor rates. In addition to higher costs, she said that supply chain issues have required missions to order long-lead items earlier than expected, which requires more money earlier in the project’s development than anticipated.

Glaze said that, as those missions prepare for launch, they have been asking for more money for operations than anticipated. “I don’t think we’re very good at estimating what operational costs will be,” she said at the advisory committee meeting. Operations costs, she noted, are not part of the cost cap for competed planetary science missions, and thus don’t get refined until later in the mission.

“There’s significant stress on the planetary budget,” she said at the AGU town hall. “It’s been a bit brittle and fragile.”

Those issues came to a head in mid-2022 when Psyche, a Discovery-class mission to the asteroid of the same name, suffered delays in testing flight software that caused it to miss its launch window. NASA initiated an independent review that concluded that while Psyche is back on track for a launch now scheduled for October 2023, there were broader institutional issues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is developing Psyche, that had to be corrected.

As part of NASA’s response to that review, the agency said Nov. 4 it would delay by at least three years the launch of a Venus orbiter mission called VERITAS that is also part of the Discovery program and under development at JPL. Glaze suggested that the budgetary pressures facing the planetary science program left her with no other options to address the Psyche problems than to delay VERITAS.

“This was not a decision that was easily arrived at,” she said at the AGU town hall. “I do not think this is a good answer. I think it is the least of the bad answers that we could come up with.”

Those budgetary stresses could also affect implementation of the planetary science decadal survey released in April 2022. Glaze reiterated concerns she made in August that funding projections for planetary science fell short of the “level” budget in the decadal, the lower of two budget profiles included in that report. While the level budget projected spending to increase to more than $3.5 billion a year by the middle of the decade, the fiscal year 2023 budget proposal kept spending for planetary science at less than $3.2 billion through 2026, increasing to $3.3 billion in 2027.

“We will continue to try and secure the funding so that we can execute what is in the decadal survey,” she said at the town hall. “The key takeaway from this is that there may be a slight delay in getting some of the activities kicked off.”

As in August, she said those delays would likely affect the top-priority large, or flagship, mission from the decadal, a Uranus orbiter and probe. The science for such a mission is already well-established, she said, so the focus in the near term will be technical studies, including options to launch the mission after 2031, when a Jupiter gravity assist that would shorten the travel time to Uranus is no longer available.