NASA is talking about overhauling how it selects and develops science missions, in an effort to reduce costs, and increase the pace of missions.
The new approach, called Competition Model 2.0 (CM 2.0), was announced on Oct. 21 in an open letter from Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD), to the NASA science community. The changes, directed by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, could significantly reshape how scientists, universities, NASA centers and commercial companies vie for future missions.
"We have heard you. We have listened. We know that the burden of bringing great ideas forward has been too heavy for too long," Fox stated in the letter.
Fox and other top NASA science officials provided an overview of the reforms during a virtual town hall today (Oct. 26) at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT).
The current process for deciding on and conducting science missions is that NASA announces intended missions in what's called an Announcement of Opportunity (AOs), inviting scientists and research institutions to submit proposals. Groups or companies interested in doing the missions go through a two step process in which the competing teams create thorough engineering and financial details as part of their proposals before NASA selects finalists for further study. The process can take up to three years, neither fast nor low cost for providers working toward getting the missions.
CM 2.0 aims to reduce that burden by emphasizing scientific distinction during initial evaluations, allowing teams to defer much of the engineering and financial planning until later. Instead, initial proposals will focus on the scientific objectives of a mission and a preliminary plan for how to accomplish them.
Currently, NASA organizes missions ranging from smaller Explorer missions to large, expensive flagships like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Under CM 2.0, programs including smaller Discovery planetary missions, larger New Frontiers spacecraft and Astro-Probes, a program that focuses on mid-sized astronomy missions, will retain a streamlined version of the existing two-step process, but with nearly half of the material required for initial proposals. "This means that the original 35-months timeline will be reduced to about 19.5 months, all while having a stronger, more mature mission at the time of selection," Fox wrote.
Flagship missions, meanwhile, will continue following their current procedures, which were recently revised based on lessons learned from a study of best practices examining the development of JWST.
Medium-sized missions (between those two major classes) will continue to exist and be open to smaller companies and schools. NASA plans to evaluate these missions based on their track records with projects of similar size, cost and complexity. Fox specifically mentioned that missions with a principal investigator will be able to request support from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center or Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) during the first stage of selection. That could conceivably help the customer and NASA doing the review.
Smaller, lower-cost science programs will see a more substantial selection process shakeup. "Our smallest missions will be riding the momentum of a maturing commercial space economy and will move even faster," Fox wrote.
These are specifically listed as
Small Explorer (SMEX) and Earth Venture missions, which conduct astronomy and heliophysics research, and targeted studies of Earth and its climate. Missions of Opportunity, which allow researchers to piggyback scientific investigations onto other missions, as well as hosted payloads and rideshares, will fall under the same one-step umbrella, which is expected to drop final selection timelines from approximately 32 months to just 19.
"This means more missions, more often, with more incredible science at a lower cost," Fox wrote.
Whenever we get information on proposals like this it's really hard to evaluate whether these attempts to fix a sub-optimal process will actually improve the results. Will having a smaller number of steps to go through really improve the processes? More to the point, will the people working on proposals do just as well as they do currently if we kept the same number of overall steps but cut the time allowed for each step? What if we just had someone stand at their door, tapping their feet and practically chanting, "are you through yet? Are you through yet? ...' over and over all day? Deliberately absurd example. I hope to be shown this was a good thing to do.
And speaking of "expensive flagships"...
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