Dramatic cost increase for NASA space physics mission

March 16, 11:51 PMDC Space News ExaminerKeith Stein

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Photo: NASA

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has selected United Launch Alliance of Littleton, Colo. to launch the agency’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) space physics mission.

The unmanned spacecraft will lift-off from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. aboard an Atlas V rocket.

MMS is a space physics research effort to discover the fundamental plasma physics processes of magnetic reconnection that occurs when energy emanating from the sun's solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetic field. Four identical satellites will be launched together in a stacked configuration. They will fly in an elliptical orbit around Earth.

Originally, MMS was designed as a five spacecraft multiphase mission to investigate magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration, and turbulence in several regions of Earth’s magnetosphere, but several factors have caused the mission cost to grow dramatically, according to a National Research Council report released March 10.

The science instruments increased in size, complexity, and cost. The number of spacecraft was then reduced to four, however, the cost grew nonetheless when MMS independent review panel recommended further redundancy in the instrumentation and the spacecraft.

Then the mission was moved from a Boeing Delta II rocket to the more expensive Lockheed Martin Atlas V.

Budget reductions then forced the program to stretch out its development schedule, increasing total cost even more.

Finally, although the significant cost increases are difficult to fully account for, the switch from a competitive, principle-investigator managed mission to an in-house spacecraft at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, associated increases in civil servant staffing and changes in full-cost accounting, may also have resulted in significant cost increases, NRC said in their report. As it stands, the total mission price tag is currently $990 million versus the estimated $350 million, NRC added.

The project is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., under a contract with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The launch is planned for 2014.