Almost unnoticed, listed in NASA’s 2021 fiscal financing section of the recently approved draft omnibus spending bill, is a provision that appears to release the upcoming Europa Clipper mission from the Space Launch System (SLS).
According to Space News, the mandate for the Europa Clipper mission to be launched on an SLS remains in effect only if there are too high delay and cost missiles and if concerns about hardware compatibility between the probe and the launcher are resolved. Otherwise, NASA is free to look for commercial alternatives to take Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon.
Europa Clipper is about to enter orbit around Jupiter and make several flight maneuvers near Europa, 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 century or any other century.
Europa Clipper was mandated to fly an SLS for a start, it was the result of an inappropriate side of Congress’ budget policy. The space probe was supported by the former Rep. John Culberson
John Abney Culberson: Texan Republicans Ring Alarm After 2020 Democratic Party Platform 2020 Supports Trump’s Monthly NASA Program Bottom Line MORE (R-Texas), who at the time was chairman of the NASA-funded Home Loans Subcommittee. To gain support for Europa Clipper, Culberson added the SLS mandate, which obtained support from Sen. Richard Shelby
Richard Craig Shelby Republican Election Struggles Intensify Bipartisan Senator Group: Elections End (R-Ala.), Chairman of the Senate Credit Committee. Shelby State contains a number of aerospace contractors involved in the development of SLS.
Ironically, Culberson lost his place in 2018, in part because his opponent, Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) accused him of being more concerned with space missions than local issues, such as the floods caused by Hurricane Harvey. However, Europa Clipper continued without its key congressional champion.
As Ars Technica points out, the launch of the Europa Clipper on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy saves the $ 1.5 billion mission. An advantage of using SLS was that it allows a direct path to Jupiter without the time-consuming planetary flight maneuvers that previous missions to the outer planets required. The Falcon Heavy alone could not take the Europa Clipper into Jupiter space directly, although it might be able to be equipped with a powerful Centaur blow stage.
Both the economy and the physics of reaching Europe change if SpaceX’s Starship, currently developing in Boca Chica, Texas, becomes available to launch the Europe Clipper in the mid-2020s. Starship is set to meet the CEO of SpaceX Elon Musk
Will Elon Reeve Musk Axiom Space provide a replacement commercial space station for NASA’s ISS? The richest people in the world have added .8T to their combined fortune in 2020 Trump ends Obama’s 12-year career as the most admired man: Gallup MOREdreams of establishing Mars. But the massive reusable rocket would be available for other things, including sending probes to outer planets.
Massive cost savings by using a commercial launcher for Europa Clipper create other possibilities. Europa Lander could be replaced. A mission in Saturn’s frozen world, Enceladus, can also be illuminated in green.
SLS is the result of a Faustian fair between NASA and Congress in 2010. Congress was outraged by President Obama’s cancellation of the Constellation’s Bush-era deep space exploration program. According to NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, NASA agreed with SLS in exchange for Congress, which supports the Commercial Crew program that came to fruition with the launch of the astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS) on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.
SLS has since been a major player in America’s space ambitions. SLS, which is due to launch the Artemis 1 unmanned mission around the month, is currently stuck in a series of ground-based tests. SLS currently uses much of the money allocated to NASA’s Artemis program. The first flight is scheduled for November 2021 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, SpaceX flew prototypes of the starship, albeit only in the atmosphere and with occasionally explosive results. NASA is officially contemptuous of the idea of replacing SLS with Starship. However, a version of the massive SpaceX missile ship is underway as a monthly landing for Artemis. It wouldn’t be a big leap to cut SLS entirely and go straight to Starship, if it weren’t for Congressional budget policy.
And that, as Shakespeare would say, is friction.
Mark Whittington, who frequently writes about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why Is It So Hard to Return to the Moon? as well as the Moon, Mars and beyond. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. It is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, LA Times and the Washington Post, among other places.