WASHINGTON — The top of a delayed NASA mission to Venus has warned that the project risks losing critical expertise if the agency doesn’t discover a strategy to move up the mission.
NASA chosen the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, or VERITAS, mission in 2021 as one in every of two Discovery-class missions to Venus, on the time planned for launch within the late 2020s. VERITAS would go into orbit around Mars and study the planet using several instruments, including an artificial aperture radar (SAR) imager.
Nevertheless, the agency decided a yr ago to delay the mission by three years, to no sooner than 2031, citing the findings of an review into delays of one other NASA mission, Psyche, that found institutional problems on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The delay, NASA said, would address a “workforce imbalance” at JPL, which is the lead center for VERITAS, and release funding needed to accommodate the Psyche delay.
At a gathering last week of the Venus Exploration Evaluation Group, or VEXAG, the principal investigator for VERITAS argued that most of the issues that prompted the delay have been resolved. “Those issues are essentially behind us,” said Sue Smrekar of JPL, citing the launch in October of Psyche and progress on two other major JPL-led missions, Europa Clipper and the NISAR Earth science spacecraft, each on schedule for launches in 2024.
She said an prolonged delay, as still planned by NASA, threatened the personnel available for VERITAS, particular for its SAR instrument being developed at JPL. “There’s insufficient radar work at JPL. The radar workforce is admittedly at threat,” she said. “It’s a very big technical threat for us.”
She noted that while NASA has provided some funding for VERITAS to keep up its science team, there was “zero support for engineering development” for the mission. That has led some engineering staff assigned to the mission to hunt other work at JPL.
“We’re losing our key team members on a regular basis,” she said. “Over the dozen years it took us to get chosen we developed a highly experienced, knowledgeable team, and so they must go take other jobs.”
The mission is studying launch opportunities for VERITAS in 2031 and 2032 as requested by NASA, but Smrekar said there was an earlier launch opportunity in November 2029 that was still feasible. An earlier launch wouldn’t only address the workforce concerns but additionally deconflict with two other Venus missions, NASA’s DAVINCI and ESA’s EnVision, arriving at Venus within the early 2030s.
“We will still make that chance if we get rolling in the subsequent yr,” she said of the November 2029 window.
The largest challenge to that is accessible funding, which is facing difficulties from each overall budget pressures on the agency in addition to cost growth on missions like Mars Sample Return. “It’s totally true that the budget is a multitude, a disaster,” she acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean that there’s no funding.”
A draft of the report accompanying the House version of a commerce, justice and science appropriations bill for fiscal yr 2024, released last week by the House Appropriations Committee, does provide support for VERITAS. “The Committee recommends that NASA request sufficient funding to make sure a launch by the tip of the last decade,” it said of VERITAS, directing NASA to supply a budget profile “to make sure the mission can remain heading in the right direction.”
“Our risk goes up the longer we’re delayed and the longer we get no funding,” Smrekar said on the VEXAG meeting.