Page Text: Robotic Precursor Prospects: It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times
As most readers are surely aware, NASA's effort to return to the Moon in recent years included the robotic precursor missions Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS. These modern robotic pathfinders for HSF succeeded, but the costly Ares rockets and Orion capsule forced the elimination of the longer-term line of robotic precursor missions that was such a crucial part of the Vision for Space Exploration. NASA's proposed FY2011 change in direction called for the revival of the robotic precursor line, but this time it would scout multiple destinations, such as the Moon, NEOs, Mars, and the Martian moons, for resources and hazards to astronauts, as well as to demonstrate technologies like ISRU at those destinations. In the compromise between the Administration and Congress that allowed NASA to start the commercial crew program and to restore some technology development funding lost during the Constellation years while forcing the agency to develop the SLS and MPCV, the robotic precursor mission line was first scaled back considerably, and then lost altogether. With the prospect of budget overruns on the big projects and general downward pressure on NASA's budget, it doesn't look easy to revive the robotic precursors.
It is possible for NASA's Planetary Science program to do some robotic precursor work as a by-product of its robotic science missions, but NASA's Planetary Science budget is being cut. In this case the expensive JWST is a major cause of the budget pressure, but the expense of the proposed Planetary Science Flagship missions is not helping.
Could the situation for robotic precursor missions be any worse?
There is no doubt about it, the vital concept of robotic precursor missions for HSF has fallen on hard times. Robotic precursor missions can be quite affordable and can accomplish a lot, but it's not easy for them to thrive at NASA when the agency budget is cut while expensive NASA projects with strong political backing enjoy cost overruns and delays.
Having set this rather unpleasant stage, I'd like to offer some hope for robotic precursors. I don't think we will see a fleet of NASA robotic precursor missions fanning out across the inner solar system like we might have hoped during NASA's FY11 budget proposal, or making tracks in the lunar surface like we might have expected during the early days of the Vision for Space Exploration. It's likely that many of the robotic precursor possibilities I'll mention will not come to fruition, but we still can reasonably expect to see some progress. Here are some possible sources of such HSF robotic precursor progress:
Planetary Resources - There has been a lot of discussion of the long-term goal of Planetary Resources to mine asteroids, and also of its shorter-term prospects in selling low-cost spacecraft for astronomy and Earth imaging. However, I haven't seen nearly has much on the role this company could play in the robotic precursor field. Consider NASA's August 2010 Exploration Precursor Robotic Missions (xPRM) Point of Departure Plans (PDF) presentation, which focused on NEO robotic precursor missions. This set of missions included a NEO Telescopic Survey to identify appropriate NEOs for HSF missions. It also included several options for NEO Rendezvous missions to more fully characterize potential targets, from one spacecraft comparable to a NASA Discovery mission to study a single NEO in detail to a set of 3 or 4 small spacecraft to study several potential HSF destinations in less detail. These NASA plans don't appear to have much chance of happening in the current political and budget environment, but consider how Planetary Resources might achieve similar goals, either in the course of their own space resource assessment and development plans or by offering a low-cost way for NASA to achieve some of its robotic precursor goals should a funding wedge appear. The first Planetary Resources spacecraft is a Leo Space Telescope that can search for NEOs. The second Planetary Resources spacecraft planned is the Interceptor that could approach, study, and possible "intercept" Earth-crossing NEOs. The third generation is the Rendezvous Prospector, which could rendezvous with NEOs that are more difficult to reach and require more capable communication links. It's not too difficult to see how these generations of spacecraft could fulfill some of the robotic precursor ambitions that NASA had for NEOs, although depending on the circumstances the resulting data might not be available to certain organizations that might need it.
Google Lunar X PRIZE - The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30M competition intended to encourage private groups to develop mobile lunar landers. There are dozens of Google Lunar X PRIZE teams with varying goals, prospects for winning the competition, and intent to do work that would return significant robotic precursor data. I won't describe all of the teams here, but instead will just give one example of a prominent team with robotic precursor ambitions. Astrobotic intends to send an 80 kg rover, Red Rover, near the lunar equator to win the prize and to deploy 30 kg of science instruments. It then plans to send a 150 kg rover, Polaris, with 80 kg of instruments to one of the lunar pole regions to prospect for water. The intent is to continue with a series of missions.
NASA's Mars Upheaval - I have mixed feelings about the current changes in NASA's Planetary Science portfolio, and in particular with its Mars missions. On the one hand, I don't think Planetary Science is the right place for the budget ax to fall, and I don't like to see an affordable mission like the 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter mission abandoned (at least as far as the U.S. is concerned). On the other hand, I don't think either NASA's original Mars Sample Return plan or the next-in-line Flagship mission to Europa were affordable, and the possibility of developing more affordable missions with intentional HSF participation in the robotic precursor sense is welcome. It's hard to predict what the outcome of all of this will be, and it's probably a fair bet to guess that it won't end well. In the meantime, we can see a step in the process right now at the Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration conference being held from June 12-14 at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. Here are some sample abstracts (all PDFs) that show some of the robotic precursor possibilities that just might emerge from the current chaos:
ICE DRAGON: A MISSION TO ADDRESS SCIENCE AND HUMAN EXPLORATION OBJECTIVES ON MARS - We present a mission concept where a SpaceX Dragon capsule lands a payload on Mars that samples ground ice to search for evidence of life, assess hazards to future human missions, and demonstrate use of Martian resources.