Two industry-academic teams will be selected on 1 June for further design and mission planning work on NASA's troubled Pluto-Kuiper mission, which may be launched as early as 2004.
The mission, which has been cancelled a number of times, is still in doubt. It was cancelled last year due to a lack of funding, but the furore that followed that decision resulted in NASA in December issuing an announcement of opportunity direct to industry for a low-cost $500 million mission. But recent Bush Administration cuts to NASA's budget made it difficult to justify the mission and led to a cancellation of the industry proposals.
Congress, however, directed NASA to continue the mission concept work while ways were worked out to increase its science budget. NASA is waiting to hear whether it can have some money from a special science fund proposed by President Bush, enabling it to save the mission.
A decision must be made this year for the craft to be launched in December 2004, during the ideal "last" flight opportunity, which would use a Jupiter gravity-assist slingshot manoeuvre, allowing a rendezvous with the most distant planet in the solar system and its geostationary-orbiting moon, Charon, in 2012. Pluto is the only planet not to have been explored by a spacecraft.
An alternative launch in January 2006 would involve a less-powerful Jupiter slingshot, resulting in a rendezvous in 2020. After 2006, a Jupiter gravity-assist flight would not be possible because of the change in the relative motions and positions of the planets. An expensive, high-power "direct route" would have to be used.
Industry proposals include a Lockheed Martin-Jet Propulsion Laboratory team which would use a spacecraft bus from the current Stardust mission; a John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory spacecraft based on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous craft, NEAR-Shoemaker; and a Russian proposal. The finalist could be named by August.
Source: Flight International
