Science, the Vision, and smallsats

The keynote speaker Monday at the AIAA/Utah State Conference on Small Satellites was Orlando Figueroa, the deupty associate administrator for programs in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Figueroa told the audience that the role small satellites will play in implementing the Vision for Space Exploration “has not diminished; they still play a big role.” It should be noted, though, that NASA’s definition of “small” is not necessarily shared by the hundreds of people attending the conference, many of whom are from universities and operate smallsat programs on shoestring budgets. Figueroa defines small as those missions who cost anywhere from a few tens of millions to a few hundred million dollars. By this metric, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a large spacecraft set for launch this week with a price tag of over a half-billion dollars, is merely a medium-class mission, he said.

While Figueroa defended NASA’s cost-based definitions of small satellite missions, he chided scientists for trying to squeeze too much into such missions, running up against cost caps for the various types of small-class science missions. He said that in many cases, particularly in the latest round of proposals for the Discovery class of small planetary missions, scientists got “too cute” and tried to put too much into their proposed missions, losing credibility. Figueroa also faced some sharp criticism from attendees for a lack of launch opportunities for smallsat programs, citing the cancellation of both the Hitchhiker program for small shuttle payloads and the University Explorer (UNEX) program. Figueroa defended those decisions, noting that in the UNEX program there were “more failures than successes”, although there were only a few UNEX missions ever attempted. “I can’t keep throwing money out there with no effect,” he said. He did add, though, that his office is reexaming this to see if there are ways to either revive UNEX or provide other opportunities for university-developed low-cost smallsat missions.

Figueroa was also asked about the overall science budget for the agency. He said that the administrator “has promised to keep the budget stable” although NASA is currently going through a “difficult rebalancing” of the full range of science programs.