Almost unnoticed, trapped in the 2021 fiscal NASA funding division of the newly passed omnibus spending bill, is a provision that appears to be liberating the upcoming Europe Clipper mission from the Space Launch System (SLS).
According to Space News, the mandate to launch the Europa Clipper mission on an SLS only applies if the rear-schedule and overpriced heavy-lift rocket is available and resolved as hardware compatibility concerns between the probe and the launcher. Otherwise, NASA is free to seek commercial alternatives to bring the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s ice-covered moon.
Europa Clipper plans to make an orbit around Jupiter and make multiple flight maneuvers near Europe, an icy world that many scientists believe has a warm ocean beneath the ice sheet. Life can exist in that ocean, the confirmation of which would be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of this or any other century.
The Europa Clipper, which had the mandate to fly with an SLS first, was the result of an awkward side of congressional budget policy. The space probe was presented by former Rep. John Culberson
John Abney Culberson Texas Republicans ring alarm bells after 2020 Democratic Party platform endorses Trump’s NASA lunar program Bottom line MORE (R-Texas), then chairman of the NASA-funded Subcommittee on Home Credits. In order to gain support for the Europa Clipper, Culberson added the SLS mandate, which supports Sen. Richard Shelby
Richard Craig Shelby Republican election campaign intensifies dual group of senators: election over (R-Ala.), Chairman of the Senate Credit Committee. Shelby’s state contains a number of aviation contractors involved in the development of the SLS.
Ironically, Culberson lost his seat in 2018, in part because his opponent, Representative Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas), accused him of being more concerned about space missions than local issues, such as Hurricane Harvey flooding. Nevertheless, the Europa Clipper continued without its main champion in Congress.
As Ars Technica noted, the mission saves $ 1.5 billion by launching the Europa Clipper on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. An advantage of using the SLS was that it allowed a direct route to Jupiter without the time-consuming planetary flying maneuvers required by previous missions to the outer planets. The Falcon Heavy alone would not be able to get the Europa Clipper directly into Jupiter space, although it could be if it was equipped with a powerful Centaur kicking stage.
Both the economics and physics to reach Europe will change as SpaceX’s Starship, currently being developed in Boca Chica, Texas, will be available to launch the Europa Clipper in the mid-2020s. The Starship is meant to fulfill the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk Will Axiom Space Replace a Commercial Space Station for NASA’s ISS? World’s richest people add .8T to their combined wealth by 2020 Trump ends Obama’s 12-year career as most admired man: Gallup MORE‘s dreams of establishing Mars. But the massive reusable rocket would be available for other things, presumably including sending sins to the outer planets.
The huge cost savings through the use of a commercial launcher for the Europa Clipper create other possibilities. The Europa Lander can be placed again. A mission to Saturn’s frozen world Enceladus could also get green light.
The SLS is the result of a Faustian agreement between NASA and Congress in 2010. Congress was furious about then-President Obama’s cancellation of the constellation’s exploration program in the Bush era. According to then-NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, NASA agreed with the SLS in exchange for Congress supporting the Commercial Crew program recently established with the launch of astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
The SLS has since been a leading weight for America’s space ambitions. The SLS, which is planned to place the Artemis 1 mission around the moon, is currently trapped in a series of tests on the territory. The SLS currently uses much of the money allocated to NASA’s Artemis program. The first flight is on the earliest November 2021.
Meanwhile, SpaceX prototypes of the Starship have flown, albeit only in the atmosphere and with sometimes explosive results. NASA is officially disregarding the idea of replacing the SLS with the Starship. However, a version of the SpaceX massive rocket ship is underway as a lunar lander for Artemis. It would not be a big leap to cut out the SLS completely and go directly with the Starship, if it were not for Congress’ budgetary policy.
And that is, as Shakespeare would say, the filth.
Mark Whittington, who regularly writes about space and politics, has published a political study on space exploration entitled Why is it so difficult to go back to the moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times and the Washington Post, among others.