NASA Cuts Red Tape for Choosing Science Missions
NASA is overhauling how it picks science missions, asking for far less up front and cutting selection time by up to 45 percent, and its science chief, Nicky Fox, explains the changes to scientists at a town hall on Monday.
NASA is changing how it competes and selects its science missions under a process it calls Competition Model 2.0. Nicola "Nicky" Fox, who heads the agency's Science Mission Directorate, will explain it at a virtual town hall and take questions from scientists, academics, the media and the public.
Fox announced the changes on October 21 in a letter to the science community, saying NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman had directed the directorate to deliver science faster and spend less time and money on long competitions. Proposals will now be judged on the science first, without detailed engineering, cost and implementation plans until those are needed for a decision. For the Astro-Probes, New Frontiers and Discovery classes, NASA expects the time from a call for proposals to the second-step selection to fall from about 35 months to about 19.5 months. The town hall runs from 2 to 3 p.m. EDT on October 26, and NASA says a recording will be posted afterward.
Washington — NASA is rewriting the rules for how scientists compete to fly missions, with the stated aim of getting science off the ground sooner.
What changes
In her letter, Fox wrote that "the burden of bringing great ideas forward has been too heavy for too long," and that moving concepts through the current two-step process has taken years, with contract management problems, unpredictability and too little funding.
For the Astro-Probes, New Frontiers and Discovery mission classes, the first step will ask for only a science case, a science implementation plan and a proof-of-concept mission design, which NASA says removes roughly half the material now required in a response to an Announcement of Opportunity, the agency's formal call for proposals. The second step is a Mission Implementation Study carried out with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A single mission is chosen partway through the early design stage known as Phase A, and teams that are not picked stop work on their concepts.
MIDEX and Earth Explorer missions will follow a similar two-step process open to more implementing organizations, including universities and industry, which will be judged on past performance on projects of similar cost and complexity, with selection time again cut by up to 45 percent. The smallest classes, including SMEX, Missions of Opportunity, Earth Venture, hosted payloads and rideshares, move to a single-step competition with a smaller review team and virtual site visits, cutting the time to final selection from about 32 months to about 19, or up to 40 percent. Flagship missions keep the approach NASA adopted after the James Webb Space Telescope.
Who it is meant to help
NASA says judging proposals on science first gives principal investigators without major university or commercial backing a fair chance, and that investigators at any NASA center remain eligible. Teams will also be expected to use commercial spacecraft buses, subsystems and operations where they offer a technical or cost benefit.
The conditions
Cost and schedule control remains mandatory for every mission class, and the letter says breaching control thresholds can carry consequences up to and including ending a mission. NASA says it will roll out the changes in stages and refine them with input from the community.