OF THE ONE HUNDRED TWELVE THOUSAND WORDS comprising Public Law 113-6, enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled on the twenty-sixth of March in the Year of Our Lord 2013—the short title: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, the purpose: making consolidated appropriations and further continuing appropriations for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2013, and for other purposes—fewer than forty words, a single clause of a single sentence, mattered to an orb of ice, water, rock, and iron six hundred million miles away.441
Customarily, a budget, or, short of that, a “continuing resolution” to keep the government funded and open for business for some set amount of time—a week or a month or a fiscal year—doled out dollars in big bites and with onerous sentence structures. NASA, to name one agency, needs five billion dollars to fulfill its science mission, from launching telescopes to buying swag to hand out at school science fairs, so:
For necessary expenses, not otherwise provided for, in the conduct and support of science research and development activities, including research, development, operations, support, and services; maintenance and repair, facility planning and design; space flight, spacecraft control, and communications activities; program management; personnel and related costs, including uniforms or allowances therefor, as authorized by sections 5901 and 5902 of title 5, United States Code; travel expenses; purchase and hire of passenger motor vehicles; and purchase, lease, charter, maintenance, and operation of mission and administrative aircraft, $5,144,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2014.
But the will of Congress is more nuanced than just telling a government clerk she has five bil to blow as she likes. Accompanying every appropriations bill is a guidance report that lays out precisely what will be done with those dollars.442 Out of that five billion, We the People expect you to spend one hundred forty-six million on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter.443 And sixty-five million on Mars Science Laboratory. &c. However, unlike the appropriations bill (“I give thee $5,144,000,000”), those precise dollar amounts are, technically speaking, only suggestions. They carry no weight of law. Oh, you will hear about it if you defy the stated will of Congress—but you won’t hear about it from the inside of a jail cell.
Which is why John Culberson of Texas, in his wheelhouse as a senior member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, inserted not into the report, but into the budget itself, a single, absurdly specific sentence solving some long-unfinished business of his: “Provided, That $75,000,000 shall be for pre-formulation and/or formulation activities for a mission that meets the science goals outlined for the Jupiter Europa mission in the most recent planetary science decadal survey.”444
Culberson, meanwhile, made his opinion known to top-level headquarters officials that he wanted a spacecraft to touch that ice.445 He never kept his desire for a lander a secret—it was the only way to answer definitively the life question—and a rogue group at the lab kept him appraised on a surreptitious lander study they were conducting. (Bob, Louise, and Dave knew nothing of it and were miffed mightily to learn it had taken place behind their backs.) NASA thus directed the Europa Habitability Mission science team to investigate the lander as a third spacecraft option.
Culberson was by then in his ascendancy in congressional appropriations, with increasing sway in Republican politics by way of the emergent Tea Party movement, of which he was a founding member in the House, spurred by frustrations with Democratic success passing the Affordable Care Act. He was philosophically disposed toward low taxes and slashed spending; “Obamacare,” as it was sometimes called, offended him.446
Still, some things needed a little coin. When John the junior subcommittee member funded JIMO all those years ago, the NASA administrator took a look at the budget (the law of the land) and the report (pretty please do JIMO), and tossed the report in the trash.
Not this time, the administrator wouldn’t. Just like that, NASA by law had to get going on Europa and spend serious dollars on its development. It was, in fact, the only mission illegal for NASA not to fly.
John Culberson had expanded the Katy Freeway into the widest highway in the world, and one way or another, he would build a much longer highway. He would get his spaceship to the Jovian system.
THAT SEVENTY-FIVE MILLION dollars did not send Curt Niebur skipping to the local liquor store to buy a bottle of sparkles, singing and swinging from lampposts along his merry way. Just the opposite.
Look, the money was wonderful. Jim Green, the head of the planetary science division, had been scrounging for years to keep Europa alive, and now there was a huge pile of coin to press forward on mission development. Jim, Curt, and the Europa team scattered across America could work wonders with it, but the administration’s hand had been pushed, and it had no problem slapping back. The White House was adamant: it was not pursuing a planetary science program right now. And unless NASA (via the White House) requested money for Europa, Congress could keep cash coming all day long, but the agency would not enter any long-term agreements to spend the money beyond the year appropriated.
The split between the White House and Congress on NASA funding could be measured in Grand Canyons. The Obama administration came into office with a certain set of priorities and stuck to them. Of NASA’s four major scientific disciplines—heliophysics (i.e., the sun), astrophysics (i.e., the stars), earth science (i.e., rock no. 3), and planetary science (i.e., everything else in space, dust mote to gas giant)—Jim Green was told early on and point-blank which stood where.447 Earth science came first; under this administration, climate change would not be ignored. Second came astrophysics, but more specifically, the James Webb Space Telescope—successor space observatory to Hubble and billions of dollars in the red. It was being built in Maryland and thus represented by Barbara Mikulski, who was still the ranking member and future chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. If she wanted James Webb, she would get it, wrapped with a big red bow. Next came heliophysics, because it was small, with few pennies to shake from its piggy bank, and dead last was planetary science. There were only so many dollars, and the money for earth science had to come from somewhere.448 Why? Because Congress had foisted the SLS rocket on the administration, and there was no more money. From Lori Garver’s desk on the ninth floor at NASA headquarters, it was a terrible decision to have to make, but a decision had to be made. Planetary science would just have to take one for the team. The Mars Science Laboratory—the rover Curiosity—had just landed successfully on Mars. This was as good a place to pause as any.
In the president’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, Jim lost three hundred million dollars.449 In one year. One-fifth of an entire scientific discipline: gone! And not just in 2013. As the Office of Management and Budget had told the Space Studies Board, the money would not return in 2014. Or 2015. Or 2016. Or 2017. The solar system was now being balanced on mountains of empty piggy banks. You lose twenty percent of your budget, and you tighten your belt . . . around your neck.
On paper, it was the sort of existential science cut not seen since Reagan. And through 2017? Forget launching flagships to Mars or Europa. You’re trying now to keep from switching off the spacecraft you’ve launched. You’re trying now to keep from switching off the office lights.
And the Office of Management and Budget was not playing a game. These cuts were real. From Curt’s office, although that seventy-five million dollars would enable all sorts of great work, it was a one-time thing. A Europa flagship mission was not a seventy-five-million-dollar mission. It was a two-point-five-billion-dollar mission . . . if it stayed perfectly on budget (which was unlikely—just look at Cassini or Curiosity). Europa was still in preformulation. Culberson was able to finagle seventy-five million dollars this year (and yes, Congress did restore much of the twenty-percent budget cut to planetary), but what about next year? The year after? The year after that? Once development really ramped up, there would be consecutive years with nine-figure price tags.
So all things considered, having the money was in some ways worse than Europa’s panhandling days, because at least when it lived on a shoestring and a prayer, you could rage like Lear at the heavens, curse the feckless fiscal priorities of the American government. But to have the money and know it would amount to nothing?
Shortly after the bill was signed by the president and Europa had sixty-nine million dollars in hand (Culberson’s target was reduced by a budget sequestration and federal rescissions), on April 22, 2013, Jim Green directed JPL to focus solely on the multiple flyby concept and to discontinue work on the orbiter and lander.450, 451 Europa Clipper was not the agreed-upon mission concept across the agency, but Jim was planting the flag, making a call that his superiors seemed incapable of making. “Given the funding for Europa mission pre-formulation efforts recently authorized in our fiscal year 2013 appropriation,” he wrote to the Europa team, “we can now move forward beyond the initial study phase. Please have your team focus solely on the ‘Europa Clipper’ concept, i.e. a multiple flyby mission, and do not continue development of the Europa Lander or the Europa Orbiter mission concepts at this time.”
The studies backed up his conclusions. The enhanced Europa orbiter had limitations that the study team could not overcome.452 To get the data necessary to achieve its new goals, the mission would need one hundred eight days in orbit as opposed to thirty. But a longer orbit meant more radiation protection, and such shielding was precisely the thing that killed the Jupiter Europa Orbiter. To address the ice shell science and reconnoiter a landing site, meanwhile, the orbiter would need an ice-penetrating radar and a high-resolution reconnaissance camera—which could be done, but both were data-intensive instruments. The spacecraft would have to make the most important observations as quickly as possible and blast them back to Earth immediately, because regardless of shielding, the spacecraft would eventually (or might suddenly) die of radiation poisoning and crash into Europa. But the real problem with the enhanced orbiter was its inability to work out Europa’s composition: it could not carry two mass spectrometers, to say nothing of a thermal imager, without compromising its higher-priority payload. Which meant if the orbiter flew, the nature of the surface would remain a mystery—its salts, organics, and chemical makeup would remain blank spots on the map. Moreover, the enhanced orbiter was not “cost neutral,” as requested; it would break the cap.453
An enhanced Europa Clipper, on the other hand, addressed every stated objective posed by the science definition team going back to the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (and by extension, the studies before that one as well). The spacecraft could accommodate a magnetometer, a thermal imager, a gravity science antenna, a high-definition reconnaissance camera (for a future lander), and a plasma instrument—everything, in other words, you would need to learn about Europa’s ice shell, ocean, composition, geology, and eventual landing site. Clever modifications to the model payload kept Clipper cost neutral. The mission would last for years, cost half the money, and do most of the science that the late, great, (allegedly) four-point-seven-billion-dollar Jupiter Europa Orbiter would have done, and because Europa Clipper would orbit Jupiter, NASA could, when the time came, safely dispose of the spacecraft. Rather than crash into a potentially habitable ocean world, it would dive into the Jovian abyss (or maybe even Io!—the possibilities were endless), where it would be vaporized. There was practically no risk of contaminating the whales of Europa.
The Europa Clipper decision, however, was limited to the planetary science division. The way these things had worked, headquarters might well decide later to fly an orbiter instead. Curt therefore warned the science definition team to be ready for anything. Should Europa Clipper be killed and an orbiter chosen, everyone should be ready to sing with a happy heart the praises of an orbiter and to make the best doggone orbiter mission NASA had ever seen. The idea was to make it hard for NASA to say no to any Europa mission—redundancy of the most exhausting and dissonant sort.
With a spacecraft concept now sort of chosen, the science definition team reformulated itself as a Europa Science Advisory Group, paring down its membership to the most essential players.454 No such group was strictly necessary, but the consensus from everyone who wasn’t a Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer was that Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers made design decisions that sapped spacecraft science. You needed the tension of a science team to keep the engineers honest. Tom Gavin might have been the best in the world at building a spacecraft, but he was not a Europa scholar, and if he had to make a call that would harm the science in the interest of attaining some elegant technical solution, he would go with the technical solution every time and sleep very well that night. So Louise remained chair of the advisory group, and a reinvigorated Bob was back as study scientist.
Culberson had acquired an almost mythical stature by now among the Europans, who referred to him alternately and endearingly as “Our Benefactor” or “the Buffalo.” Headquarters set aside fifteen million dollars of the congressman’s appropriation to further develop and retire the risks associated with the science instruments composing the spacecraft’s payload.455 Curt called the effort ICEE—Instrument Concepts for Europa Exploration—pronounced like the convenience store staple frozen fruit drink (and don’t think the PowerPoint slides forgot about that: a frozen Europa in a red-and-blue cup).456 And he and the Europa leadership team were insistent that if at all possible, pull from flight-proven hardware. If somebody else built some specific radiation-hardened chip, use that chip. Don’t reinvent wheels and introduce uncertainty. If at all possible, avoid thaumaturgic solutions to technical problems. The Europa Clipper mantra: No miracles.
THOUGH CURT WAS at the epicenter of the budget clash between Congress and the White House, it was fine. He would deal with it one roll of the rock at a time. Two years earlier, he had learned perspective in the worst way possible. And all of this? He kept a clean desk. He would handle it.
On January 3, 2011, a combination PET-CT scan had revealed seven small spots on his wife’s lungs.457 Susan had spent the second half of 2010 undergoing radiation and chemotherapy, and the two had hoped these would be the images giving her a desperately deserved all clear. Four days later, however, doctors delivered a diagnosis of cancer—her fourth recurrence in four years. She started a clinical trial of a possible treatment, but Susan was under no illusion about what the recurrence meant. Survival involved sudden trips to emergency rooms, chronic headaches, sensitivity to brightness, dizziness, and nausea.458 Respite meant lying on a bed in a darkened room. Those days were hell.
But she was also Susan Niebur, the woman who had kicked open the door at NASA headquarters for scientists under the age of eighty; Curt would still be working on hex bolts for aircraft landing gear at Raytheon if not for her! She had helped spark what would be an irrepressible grassroots cultural change at the ossified agency nerve center. She was a mom at home, and a mother to so many careers, and as ever, she had work left to do.
Soon after diagnosis no. 4, mornings involved visits with lawyers to get her affairs in order, and afternoons were spent watching PBS Kids with her little ones. But she also found time to organize advocacy initiatives for cancer patients; blog prodigiously on her personal online journal, Toddler Planet—hundreds of thousands of words for hundreds of thousands of readers—on parenthood, cancer treatments, reflections on life, love, parenthood, and mortality. Through Women in Planetary Science, which had taken on a life of its own and become a unifying force in the field, online, in the press, in the flesh, she organized talks and meetings, facilitated networking events, and worked to change institutional malpractice that disproportionately affected women. She attended conferences, published papers, spoke on panels, and presented posters. Some days she was bedridden. Some days she celebrated birthdays at bowling alleys with her boys.
One day, her eldest son noticed the Lego minifig in her office, Princess-Who-Can-Defend-Herself, with the eyeglasses and the sword, and exclaimed: “She’s you! She’s inside you, fighting the cancer!”459 And so she was.
But time, Susan knew, was short. At the time of her rediagnosis, her youngest had just turned four, and not long after receiving the news, she wrote in her journal: “And every day of my life, I live now for you and your brother. . . . The pain and fear and uncertainty that you’re reading about in these archives—please know always that for you—for you—it was worth it.”460
Her final blog post described an exchange with her husband, her bed “strewn with children’s toys, books, and an oxygen tank.” We got this far, said Curt, “because of your amazing strength, commitment, and love for your family that you have shown since you were diagnosed.” We got this far, she responded, “because of you, always at my side, supporting me, joking with me, taking me to yet another appointment and holding my hand. Kidding me about the speed I drink the contrast shakes, and raising eyebrows with me as the tech’s hands jiggle as he tries to place the line.”461
On Wednesday, October 17, 2012, the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society awarded, posthumously, the prestigious Harold Masursky Award to Susan Niebur “for outstanding service to planetary science and exploration.”462, 463 She had died on February 6, at just thirty-eight years of age. You didn’t even have to know her to feel devastated. A community this small, you felt everything. You lose someone like Susan, and the axis of the Earth felt somehow to wobble slightly. “All that survives after our death are publications and people,” Susan wrote on her blog. It was, she said, her mantra. And when she left, science went on, publications and people supported by the shoulders of one giant more.