The adventurous New Millennium Program made great strides in 1997 in its preparations for a series of missions launching from 1998 to 2003, with many more in the pipeline.
The program is a flagship NASA venture whose goal is the
development and testing of revolutionary technologies in space
flight so that they may be confidently used in science missions
of the future. Through a series of deep space and Earth-orbiting
missions, the New Millennium Program will validate the essential
technologies and capabilities required for challenging, new
types of missions to be flown in the next century.
In November, Dr. Fuk Li was named program manager, after
serving as acting program manager for several weeks following
the retirement of veteran JPL manager Kane Casani. Li, a remote
sensing expert who most recently served as manager of JPL's
Earth Science Program office, has the challenging task of
overseeing a wide variety of "faster, better, cheaper" missions
whose key technologies typically have never been used in space
flight before.
A key element of the New Millennium Program is the teaming of
government with industry and academia to improve America's
technological infrastructure. For this purpose, a series of
Integrated Product Development Teams composed of private firms,
universities and research labs are now working to identify,
design and deliver technologies needed to enable future science
missions so that they can be tested through upcoming New
Millennium missions.
Those missions begin this summer with Deep Space 1, whose
launch period starts July 1. Flying by asteroid McAuliffe, then
by Mars and finally by comet West-Kohoutek-Ikemura, DS1 will be
the first spacecraft ever to rely on solar electric propulsion
rather than conventional propellant-based systems for its main
source of thrust.
Solar electric propulsion is but one of 12 advanced
technologies to be demonstrated on this high-risk mission.
Others include new telecommunications equipment; autonomous
optical navigation; advanced solar arrays; a miniature
integrated ion and electron spectrometer; microelectronic
devices; and a miniaturized camera and imaging spectrometer that
will take pictures and make chemical maps of the target asteroid
and comet.
Late last summer, the DS1 bus arrived at JPL from the Arizona
facilities of DS1's industry partner, Spectrum Astro, and the
spacecraft has since been almost fully assembled. It is now
preparing for testing in the 25-foot space simulator in Building
150 in preparation for its delivery to the Cape in early spring.
Deep Space 2 will send two small probes weighing two
kilograms (4.5 pounds) each aboard the 1998 Mars Surveyor lander
to study Mars' soil and atmosphere. In-situ instrument
technologies for making direct measurements of the Martian
surface will include a meteorological pressure sensor,
temperature sensors for measuring the thermal properties of the
Martian soil, and a subsurface soil collection and analysis
instrument.
1997 saw many crucial tests of the probe and instrumentation
design, nearly all taking place at the New Mexico Institute of
Mining Technology's Energetic Materials Research and Test Center
in Socorro, N.M. A critical test took place on Oct. 29, when two
of the most sensitive subsystems, a battery assembly and a tiny
motor and drill assembly for extracting a subterranean soil
sample, were successfully qualified. Fully integrated systems
testing will take place in 1998 in preparation for DS2's January
1999 launch.
An advanced, lightweight scientific instrument designed to
produce visible and short-wave infrared images of Earth's land
surfaces was selected as the New Millennium Program's first
Earth-observing mission. Launching in May 1999, Earth Orbiter 1
is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md. Like DS1, it too will validate 12 technologies.
The mission will serve multiple purposes, including providing
remote-sensing measurements of Earth that are consistent with
data collected since 1972 by the Landsat series of satellites,
which is used by farmers, foresters, geologists and city
planners. In addition, it will acquire data with finer spectral
resolution, a capability long sought by many scientists studying
Earth and its environs, and it will lay the technological
groundwork for inexpensive, more compact imaging instruments in
the future.
In 1997, a successful EO-1 critical design was conducted.
Focal plane and telescope elements are on schedule to be
delivered to MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, the instrument
integrator, in the first half of 1998. All of the major
structural elements of the bus are fabricated, and the
mechanical assembly and flight electrical harness are now in
process. Spacecraft bus-level integration will begin this
spring, and the instrument is due for bus integration at the end
of 1998.
In mid-November, NASA announced that Earth Orbiter 2 will
encompass the Space-Readiness Coherent Lidar Experiment
(Sparcle), flying in the cargo bay of the space shuttle.
Scheduled to launch in 2001, its goal is to determine whether a
space-based sensor can accurately measure global winds within
Earth's atmosphere from just above the surface to a height of
about 16 kilometers (10 miles).
Among the many candidate New Millennium Program launches are
Deep Space 3, an interferometry mission encompassing three
spacecraft orbiting the sun in formation, and Deep Space
4/Champollion, the first landing of a science payload on the
nucleus of an active comet.
Landing in 2005, DS4 will analyze the nucleus; conduct an
atomic, molecular and mineralogical composition assessment down
to a depth of one meter; assess such physical properties as
thermal conductivity; send back both standard and stereographic
images; and attempt to return a nucleus sample to Earth by 2010.
1997's DS4 activities have included developing detailed
designs of the lander and carrier spacecraft, testing of
spacecraft anchoring systems at the China Lake Naval Weapons
Testing Center in Ridgecrest, Calif., and the construction of a
lab at JPL dedicated to the creation of cometary simulant
materials that replicate the possible properties of a comet
nucleus for further spacecraft anchor and drilling tests.
