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Planetary News: Voyager (2005)Voyager 1 Enters Final Frontier of Solar System as NASA Considers TerminationBy A.J.S. RaylMay 24, 2005 Voyager 1, the most distant human-made object in space, has crossed the termination shock, the last major threshold in the solar system, team members revealed today at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. "Voyager 1 has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space," announced Edward C. Stone, the mission's chief scientist, of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). On December 17, 2004, when Voyager 1 was 94 times Earth's distance from the Sun (94 astronomical units), energetic particle beams became steady in strength, the direction of these beams nearly reversed, the magnetic field strength jumped, and new radio waves were observed -- all signs that the spacecraft had crossed the shock. Voyager 1 is now in the heliosheath, blazing a trail for the shores of interstellar space -- and an uncertain future. Not because of the dangers the venerable spacecraft may encounter as it heads into the blackness of deep space, but because NASA officials down here on Earth have proposed terminating the mission as a way to cut costs, even as the agency issues a press release heralding the mission's latest achievement. The twin Voyager spacecraft achieved their initial mission goals in the 1980s, and went on to explore the outer solar system, celebrating their 25th anniversary in 2002 and continuing on a journey that is taking them where no spacecraft have gone before. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are phoning home to JPL every single day, at a lean, no frills $4.5 million annually, and all indications are that they can continue to return rich data through about 2020 when they will exhaust their plutonium power sources. But, as winter gave way to spring this year -- and as the previous NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe, was transitioning out, and before Michael D. Griffin was appointed -- the extended mission operations part of the budget for Fiscal Year 2006 was revised -- and Voyager, which had previously been approved for funding at least through 2006, was no where to be found. Some scientists -- including Voyagers' own -- were incredulous on hearing the news. "At first, I thought it must be a misunderstanding, because it couldn't possibly be true," Stamatios M. (Tom) Krimigis, principal investigator on the low energy charged particle instrument on board both spacecraft told The Planetary Society in an interview last week. "We're leaving the neighborhood, and Voyager is the first and only human-made object to cross this boundary. It's like Columbus seeing the shores of America and saying, 'Well, time to turn around and go home.' The absurdity of this is that for the past three years Voyager has been exploring a new frontier, and if there is an exploration initiative as NASA and the President have proclaimed, then Voyager is one of the finest examples, if not the finest example of exploring the frontier. It's so mind-boggling, I said to myself, 'rational people would not arrive at this kind of a decision.' Then I found out otherwise." The scientific community and the public began to respond as the word spread. "Only a confused space agency would consider shutting down the Voyager spacecraft as they approach the uncharted edge of the Solar System," opined an editorial published in Nature on May 5. "Lost in Space" concluded the headline for the Boston Globe's editorial denouncing the plan to pull the plugs. The Planetary Society, meanwhile, began to organize a grassroots campaign to insure these veteran explorers -- Earth's most distant emissaries -- are allowed to live longer, and prosper until the ends of their robot lives. "We are going to vigorously protest this ridiculous proposal by NASA," said Executive Director Louis D. Friedman. "It isn't just false economy to pull the plug on Voyager -- it is no economy. The cost savings are a pittance, the potential value is enormous." Voyager is not the only extended mission that was erased from the space agency's proposed FY06 Budget. The first and only planned mission to orbit over and explore the polar regions of the Sun, Ulysses, a joint project with the European Space Agency (ESA), has also been targeted for cancellation, as have Wind and Geotail, which are studying the near space environment of Earth, and FAST, Polar, and TRACE, which are continuing to contribute to the coordinated study of geospace. It's all about money, like most things these days, and the sequence of events that led to the sudden, proposed mission erasures began with NASA's new Vision for Space Exploration set forth by President George W. Bush in January 2004, according to Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator of the science mission directorate, which oversees the Earth-Sun System division through which Voyager is funded these days. The Vision has directed NASA to refocus its goals specifically on the space shuttle return to flight, completing the space station and retiring the shuttle, and building a new crew exploration vehicle (CEV) that will take Americans out of low Earth orbit, to the Moon and onto Mars. That put into motion a long-term agenda and spending plan for the space agency that has already resulted in some major changes. So, even though the President submitted a request to Congress for $16.465 billion for NASA for the fiscal year 2006, a 2.4% increase in funding over the 2005 budget, a lot of science and engineering that NASA does and which is not directly related to those redefined objectives has been threatened, reshaped, or already cancelled, ostensibly to divert the funds to projects that will specifically carry out the Vision objectives. "There are always little adjustments every year, but nothing quite this," said Stone, a former director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where the mission was designed and built. "This is really quite unusual." What came as much of a surprise as anything to the Voyager crew was the way the mission went missing from the proposed budget seemingly without any heed to the established protocol of peer reviews. These panels of experts serve as the mechanism the space agency uses to subject its programs and projects to scientific scrutiny and to make informed decisions about launching programs and projects. The peer review panels offer up recommendations on everything from what missions get the green light, to what instruments should go onboard, as well as appropriations of funding, and if necessary, terminations. Ultimately, NASA officials make the final decisions on what missions or instruments go or don't go, but the peer reviews are utilized to provide assessments. In 2003, Voyager, along with 13 other extended or soon-to-be extended missions in the Earth-Sun System division, underwent its last senior review, a peer review panel specifically convened to look at operating missions. "The assumption of this review was that there was enough money to fund all of these missions, and so a list was prepared based on need and output, and appropriations were assigned," explained Stone. None of the extended missions, he noted, were recommended for termination. Voyager, in fact, was one that was recommended for funding through 2006, and for reevaluation in 2006 for appropriations for 2007 and beyond. The Office of Space science convenes senior reviews approximately every two years, and Voyager's next review had been slated for next spring. When Bush announced his Vision, however, all bets were off. The agency, according to numerous scientists across the various centers, fell into turmoil as officials began transforming NASA's organizational structure by ordering overhauls or the complete shuttering of some major projects and programs in attempt to streamline the agency, and put it in a better position to implement the Vision. But it's not as simple a matter as terminating or shrinking projects to reappropriate money to fund the objectives of the new mandate, at least not when it comes to Voyager. While that has happened in other realms, with regard to the part of the NASA budget with which Voyager is involved, "it's a different issue," Stone said. "The space science budget is still going up," he said. "The problem is -- it's not going up as fast as had been planned. And that means not everything fits anymore. In the science area, there are more projects that have been started than the current budget -- even with its increase -- can sustain." The 2003 panel that reviewed Voyager noted that disparity as well. "The in-guide ('bare bones') budgets of the [14] proposals exceed the total available for the four-year period FY04-07 of this review by approximately $29 million," the panel wrote. "The annual mismatch between the budget and proposed 'bare bones' grew from $3 million in FY04 to $11 million in FY07." Secondly, Stone added, "there is a refocusing of some aspects of the science budget in the context of the new Vision, which is related but a separate issue from just pure budget. So there is a lot going on here." When officials in the Earth-Sun System Division, which is part of the Science Mission Directorate, revisited their budget, they turned to the 2003 Senior Review to make decisions on proposed cuts, Asrar said in an interview last Thursday. "As part of that [2003 Senior Review] process, Voyager was evaluated along with the [13] other missions," he said. "Based on the science priorities and strategy that the office had had at the time, Voyager did not rise to the top in terms of its science-value-per-cost associated with operating it beyond the year 2006 timeframe." In its assessment of Voyager, the 2003 Senior Review panel stated: "V1/V2 are the only spacecraft that can study particles and the shock and plasma structure of the distant heliosphere. They are the sole source of data on the expanding solar wind in the outer heliosphere . . . frontiers [that] cannot be duplicated for 10-20 years because of propulsion limitations." The panel also found that: "Voyager has a good 'science per dollar' ratio because of modest mission costs and extraordinary spacecraft locations and forms a successful component of JPL outreach activities." At any rate, according to Asrar, the officials who tagged Voyager for cancellation based their decision on the "prioritized list that was delivered by the 2003 Senior Review." The 2003 Senior Review, according to Stone and Krimigis however, was convened to determine allocations, not to develop a prioritized list to be used for cancellation of missions. Therefore, using that list makes no sense, they said. "The Senior Review membership was never asked the question -- 'If we need to terminate missions to save a certain amount of money, what is the priority list?'" said Krimigis. Stephen L. Keil, chair of that review and director of the National Solar Observatory, confirmed that. "Voyager needed $4.5 to $5 million, and the committee said that was appropriate and listed it at that level, which was in the middle," Krimigis elaborated. "At no time was there a suggestion [during that review] that any of those missions would be considered for termination. If [that had been the case], the answer would have been completely different, and I'm pretty sure Voyager would be at the top of the list for scientific priority reasons." "This was not a decision that was really arrived at by the NASA folks," insisted Asrar. "We don't make these decisions based on our own judgment. We use input from the scientific community at large." "This was a NASA Headquarters decision," responded Krimigis. "But in trying to pinpoint the source of the decision, everybody denies that they made it. What is clear is that the people involved with that decision are people who simply have no knowledge of science per se." Getting to the bottom of just exactly how Voyager was selected for termination obviously involves politics, and is not as simple as locating and speaking with the person(s) who made and/or approved the decision. Certainly, no one has stepped up to assume responsibility, and sorting it all out may ultimately be impossible. Alphonso V. Diaz, the associate administrator of the science mission directorate, nor Richard Fisher, deputy director of the Earth-Sun System Division were unavailable for comment. At the end of the day, however, everyone The Planetary Society spoke with agreed that NASA mission directorate heads ultimately must make or approve the final decisions on budget amendments that are then channeled up to the Administrator, who then submits them to Congress. In any case, once reality bit, the Voyager scientists and supporters didn't wait around. Lennard A. Fisk -- professor of atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences at the University of Michigan, and chair of the National Academies' Space Studies Board -- and Stone -- who in addition to being Voyager's chief scientist is also professor of physics and vice provost for special projects at Caltech -- wrote and disseminated a white paper on the benefits and losses that will undermine NASA and the scientific community if Voyager and other extended missions are terminated, emphatically addressing the impact on education. "If these reductions prevail," they wrote, "the loss of science will be irreplaceable for decades, if not centuries to come." They immediately began asking for another review -- and last week headquarters announced that Voyager would be re-reviewed by a panel in November. Asrar said that the senior review process was always in effect, and that NASA's advisory committee had suggested another senior review of Voyager was in order. "We expedited the review and brought the review forward to do the due diligence, to make sure all the checks and balances are in place before we make any decision," he said. "As a result we decided to find the necessary resources from within the program to continue the operation of Voyager and until that study is completed. Last year we got a set of new goals and objectives for the next two to three decades, which really highlighted the need for understanding the interplanetary [medium] through which some of our spacecraft and humans are going to travel, so in light of the new strategy and new objectives, we decided to ask the upcoming senior review group to do another evaluation of Voyager specifically," said Asrar. But weren't the new goals and objectives the reason Voyager was proposed for termination to begin with? "Sometimes the pace of events, such as defining new sets of scientific and technological goals and priorities, are taking place faster than the peer review process we have in place, but fortunately because of these checks and balances . . . we are putting everything on hold until this review is completed," informed Asrar. "In the interim, we have identified sufficient money in our budget to continue operations of Voyager until this senior review group comes back with a recommendation to NASA." So, the story so far is that Voyager was proposed for termination, resurrected for consideration with a new senior review, and given a lifeline reprieve with the division's decision "to find the necessary resources from within the program to continue the operation of the Voyager until that study is completed," as Asrar put it. The questions that remain are: Why Voyager wasn't given a peer review before being proposed for termination, as per the protocol, and before word of its proposed cancellation hit the streets? Since Voyager was already approved for funding through 2006, weren't moneys available at least through 2005? And how much time, effort, and money on everyone's part has all this cost? The Voyagers are America's 'poster children' for exploration -- national treasures by many accounts -- and however one views the decision and however it happened, the very notion of canceling the most storied exploration mission of all time appears on the face of it bizarre and uninformed, especially in light of the deleterious response to NASA's decision not to service Hubble Space Telescope [a decision now being revisited by the new Administrator] and the attendant bad publicity that decision has continued to reap for the agency. Given those realities, one would think that Voyager's conspicuous absence from the FY06 budget would have raised something on the order of a huge red flag with someone at headquarters before the proposed budget was submitted and made public. "We understand the value of missions like Voyager and Hubble -- they have become national icons -- beyond science, these [spacecraft] are representing our scientific innovation, and intellectual power going throughout the solar system," stressed Asrar, returning to his message point. "We don't make these decisions by ourselves, but we get the scientific community involved, to help us, to provide their judgments and provide their recommendations, and we factor those into our decision making." Despite NASA's backpedaling and recent scheduling of a new review, the word of Voyager's proposed termination is what's circulating on the street. In fact, Voyager greeted Griffin at the door, as the former director of the Space department of the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) at Johns Hopkins University, arrived at his post in Washington. On April 18, in one of his first press conferences, the new NASA Administrator, when asked, made it clear that no decision on Voyager has been made, though he remained noncommittal. "We have been made aware that many have objected to the concept of shutting off some of these extended missions in what people regard as a premature way," Griffin told reporters. "We're sympathetic to those concerns. We are re-looking at it and have promised to do so. . . and it certainly would not be done without a full and careful review. That is not to say that all missions are of the same importance. Voyager may well outrank others whose time to be turned off really has come. So I'm not making a blanket offer that we're going to reach a particular answer on any one mission or that we will treat them all as a block. But we are going to consider it carefully before we turn anything off." For team members, that was reassuring to hear. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have survived in working condition longer than any mission before or since. The new science data the spacecraft have been so diligently returning have continued to astound, inform, and inspire scientists and students around the country, as well as rewrite the history books of space exploration. If funds are cut, however, both spacecraft will be silenced. Right now, this much is clear: Voyager is not dead yet, and there are, for the Voyager team and the mission's supporters and fans, reasons for hope. For starters, the November senior review will reevaluate the mission. “The message has not passed by us that Voyager is going throughout the solar system, giving us new insight into how our solar system works and learning more and more about the interplanetary medium," Asrar assured. "All of those are going to be considered in the next set of evaluations." And even if the message somehow passes by the senior review, ultimately, Congress will make the final decision -- and politicians tend to listen to their constituents in high profile matters like Voyager promises to be. Hearings on the newly revised proposed NASA budget may find their way into the hallowed halls in the coming weeks before the summer recess. Moreover, "Congress is very much opposed to the migration of funding from science to the human space flight part of the budget - and remember, this is the FY06 Budget, which the new NASA Administrator had nothing to do with," added Krimigis, who has worked alongside Griffin at the Applied Physics Lab, where both were directors of the Space Department. "The new Administrator doesn't seem to agree with the mindset that the way to increase the NASA budget is to defy Congressional directives, which is what seems to be the attitude of the previous managers." There are, however, reasons for concern. Beyond the proposed terminations in extended missions, those in charge pre-Griffin have already made deep cuts in science and research in other areas as part of the reshaping and restructuring of the agency. For example, such programs as biotechnology and cell biology, which are integral to astronaut health and safety during long-term space travel, and especially to human exploration of Mars, have been terminated without Congressional approval. Scientists working in NASA and for the agency from academic posts are expressing serious concern about the future. The money freed-up from the proposed cancellation of Voyager and other missions, cut-backs on upcoming Mars missions, and "streamlining" already done, they say, is still not enough to carry out everything that is the new Vision. The intrepid Voyagers, meanwhile, sail on undaunted. The ambassadors are each carrying with them a chronicle of Earth, a kind of time capsule in the form of a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk, just in case any intelligent life may happen upon them out there. The Voyager records -- which Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan oversaw -- are, in a way, our love letters to another civilization, and they embody the other, more ethereal aspect of the mission, the dream and the magic it has inspired -- to explore farther, and further, and to learn -- a theme so compelling it was incorporated into the first Star Trek movie, so inherently human it strikes a deep chord everyone who has marveled at the Voyagers' data returns and longevity. Since the start of the interstellar mission in 1990, the two spacecraft have returned well more than 65 billion bits of data, which continue to reveal new characteristics of the effects of the Sun in the distant solar wind. For the past three years or so, Voyager 1 has been detecting phenomena unlike any encountered before in all its years of exploration at the far edges of the solar system And now, for the first time in exploration history, an American spacecraft has succeeded in crossing over to the other side of the termination shock to enter the heliopause. A few more years of observations will more definitively illuminate this nether zone, and shed new light on the dark recesses of deep space, as Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 continue the journey toward interstellar space -- provided the team is given the funds to continue collecting the spacecrafts' transmissions. The Voyager mission currently employs the equivalent of about 10 full-time people at JPL, a skeleton crew when compared to the staff of some 300 people during the height of its famed Grand Tour of the planets through 1989. Although some of the summer interns the team has employed were not even born when the spacecraft were launched, Stone and Krimigis, along with Norman Ness, of the University of Delaware, have been with the mission since the beginning -- 30+ years and counting. Stone waxed optimistic that Voyager will sail on with NASA funds. "If you're doing things in space you have to be optimistic that somehow it will happen, because it's always a long road," he reflected. "Congress hasn't acted on the budget yet . . . somehow you've got to feel the right things will happen." "Every time we enter a new territory there are surprises, and we are already getting data the likes of which we have never seen before," Krimigis added. "All we have as a guide are some theories, and theories have been known to be incomplete and often wrong -- so it could be that what Voyager 1 is encountering is totally different than what our theories suggest, and may be different from anything we ever imagined." Given the history of this mission, it may be destiny that Voyager's greatest return has yet to be delivered. |
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