Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the - Solar System ...

consider making equivalent systems investments in the advanced Ultraflex solar array technology
that will provide higher power at greater efficiency, and aerocapture to enable efficient orbit
insertion around bodies with atmospheres.
Discovery and New Frontiers missions would benefit substantially from enhanced technology
investments in the multi-mission technology areas described earlier; however, two issues have yet to be
overcome:
• The nature of the peer review and selection process effectively precludes reliance on new and
“unproven” technology, since it increases the perceived risk and cost of new missions; and
• It is difficult to ensure that proposers have the intimate knowledge of new technologies
required to effectively incorporate them into their proposals.
While expanding its investments in generic multi-mission technologies, NASA should
encourage the intelligent use of new technologies in its competed missions. NASA should also put
mechanisms in place to ensure that new capabilities are properly transferred to the scientific
community for application to competed missions.
NASA’s comprehensive and costly flagship missions are strategic in nature, and have historically
been assigned to NASA centers rather than competed. They can benefit from and in fact are enabled by
strategic technology investments.
An obvious candidate for such investments is the Mars Sample Return campaign. MAX-C’s
most challenging technology is sample acquisition, processing, and encapsulation on Mars. The two
greatest challenges facing the later elements of the campaign are the Mars Ascent Vehicle and the end-toend
planetary protection and sample containment system. During the decade of 2013-2022, NASA
should establish an aggressive, focused technology development and validation initiative to provide
the capabilities required to complete the challenging MSR campaign.
Fortunately, the JEO mission requires no fundamentally new technology in order to accomplish
its objectives. However, the capability to design and package the science instruments, especially the
detectors, so that can operate successfully in the jovian radiation environment has not yet been completely
demonstrated. A supporting instrument technology program aimed specifically at the issue of
acquiring meaningful scientific data in a high radiation environment would be extremely valuable,
both for JEO and for any other missions that will explore Jupiter and its moons in the future.
It is essential that the Planetary Science Division also invest in the technological capabilities that
will enable missions in the decade beyond 2022. The committee strongly recommends that NASA
strive to achieve balance in its technology investment programs by addressing both the near-term
missions cited specifically in this report, as well as the longer-term missions that will be studied and
prioritized in the future.
The instruments carried by planetary missions provide the data to address key scientific questions
and test scientific hypotheses. At present there are significant technological needs across the entire range
of instruments, including the improvement and/or adaptation of existing instruments and the development
of completely new concepts. Astrobiological exploration in particular is severely limited by a lack of
flight ready instruments that can address key questions regarding past or present life elsewhere in the
solar system. The committee recommends that a broad-based, sustained program of science
instrument technology development be undertaken, and that this development include new
instrument concepts as well as improvements of existing instruments. This instrument technology
program should include the funding of development through TRL-6 for those instruments with the
highest potential for making new discoveries.
One of the biggest challenges of solar system exploration is the tremendous variety of
environments that spacecraft encounter. Systems or instruments designed for one planetary mission are
rarely able to function properly in a different environment. The committee recommends that, as part of
a balanced portfolio, a significant percentage of the Planetary Science Division technology funding
PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION
S-19