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Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Administration Expected to Endorse Limited Drilling in Alaska Project

An environmental review expected soon would effectively signal that the Willow project proceed, according to people familiar with the report.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is expected to propose a scaled-down version of a sprawling oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, according to two people familiar with the decision. The proposal would allow drilling to proceed on a limited basis as part of an $8 billion project known as Willow that climate activists have criticized for years.

The project, led by ConocoPhillips, has the potential to eventually unlock 600 million barrels of crude oil. Opponents say the decision undermines the Biden administration’s promises to cut fossil-fuel use in order to limit the damage from climate change.

The Bureau of Land Management in Alaska is preparing to say that it has selected a “preferred alternative” for development on the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska that calls for curtailing the project from five drill sites to three, according to one person who viewed the draft report in recent days, and a second who was independently briefed on the report’s contents. Both requested anonymity to discuss the details of the plan.

The BLM’s action, which is expected in the coming days, is an environmental analysis that includes options that range from permitting five drill sites (the outcome sought by ConocoPhillips) to not allowing drilling at all. It does not represent a final decision by the government, but it would effectively be a recommendation to proceed with a scaled-back drilling operation.

Separately, BLM and White House officials are considering additional measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and environmental harm, such as delaying permitting decisions for one of the drill sites and planting trees, according to one of the two people familiar with the plan.

The Interior Department’s final decision is expected to be issued in the next month or so. That decision will ultimately be made in the White House by President Biden’s top advisers, several administration officials said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The move to allow some drilling is widely considered a balancing act as the Biden administration seeks a middle ground between its climate change goals and pressure from the oil industry, as well as Alaska lawmakers. Willow is a particular priority for Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a moderate Republican who is frequently the most likely senator to break with her party and support Democratic appointees and some policy compromises.

Representative Mary Peltola of Alaska said she was concerned about the impact of climate, while also noting that Alaska relies financially on revenue from taxes on oil and gas.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

The politics are complex. Mr. Biden has urged oil companies to increase production amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which continues to threaten energy supplies. At the same time, the administration is overseeing $370 billion in wind, solar, electric vehicle and other clean energy investments to pivot the country away from fossil fuels.

To get those projects built, administration officials have said reforms to federal permitting laws are needed. But that effort has become deeply politicized, and some observers said moderate Republican lawmakers like Ms. Murkowski of Alaska might be able to help break a logjam.

“The Democrats’ Senate majority is still fragile, and they need to keep Lisa Murkowski open to voting with the Democrats on fundamental issues like the debt ceiling and budget and appropriations,” said Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University.

Climate activists called the environmental analysis a betrayal of President Biden’s campaign pledge to end new federal oil and gas leases. Over its lifetime, the project is expected to emit 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, at a time when scientists say the world must slash its carbon pollution dramatically to avoid catastrophe.

“It is incomprehensible how an administration that is as climate-conscious as this one could even be contemplating letting this project move forward,” said Abigail Dillen, the president of Earthjustice, an environmental group.

Time is also running out this year for drilling to start. ConocoPhillips has said it is hoping for a fast decision from the Biden administration that would allow initial construction to begin this winter. If spring sets in and warmer temperatures begin to melt the frozen roads, it could make it more difficult for crews to pass, and construction would have to be shelved for another year.

ConocoPhilips declined to comment on the environmental analysis until it is formally released.

Willow’s supporters, including Alaska’s congressional delegation, labor unions, building trades and some residents of the North Slope, argue that the project would bring much-needed crude oil to a market that is still seeking alternatives to Russian oil while bolstering America’s energy security. They also point out that it would create about 2,500 jobs and generate as much as $17 billion in revenue for the federal government.

Representative Mary Peltola, a Democrat who is the first Alaska Native in Congress, said she cared about the impact of climate change on Alaska, supported renewable energy and wanted to see fossil fuels phased out. But she also noted that 80 percent of Alaska’s revenues come from taxes on oil and gas operations, which is not income the state can afford to lose.

“Every Alaskan, without exception, can see with their own eyes the impacts of global climate change,” Ms. Peltola said in an interview, citing the growing trend of snowless winters. But, she added, “we still have to pay for education and public safety.”

Willow was initially approved by the Trump administration, and the Biden administration defended the approval in court. The project was then temporarily blocked by a judge, who said the prior administration’s environmental analysis was not sufficient and did not fully consider the potential harm to wildlife or the further impact on climate change.





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Space and Astronomy in February: What to Expect

February’s space events start with a somber memorial.

The first of the month is the 20th anniversary of the Columbia disaster, when seven astronauts died as their space shuttle broke up during a return flight to Earth after 17 days in space. The cause of the accident  was insulating foam that fell off the shuttle’s external fuel tank during its ascent to space. The foam struck the shuttle’s left wing and damaged its heat shielding, which then failed 16 days later during atmospheric re-entry.

The final flight of Columbia was a scientific mission, prioritizing experiments conducted aboard the space shuttle in orbit at a time when the primary mission of many space shuttle missions involved construction and resupply of the International Space Station.

Six American crew members and one Israeli astronaut died in the Columbia descent. Read about them here: Michael P. Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool and Ilan Ramon.

Journalists for The New York Times also captured the moments when the astronauts’ mission became imperiled and wrote about problems at NASA that contributed to the accident.

The comet C/2022 E3 (Z.T.F.) has been steadily approaching Earth for the first time in some 50,000 years. On Thursday, Feb. 2, the comet will make its closest approach to our planet, and its green-hued ice ball and tail will be visible from the Earth’s surface.

Even if weather foils opportunities to see the comet that day, there will be more chances to spot it, including on Feb. 10, when its proximity to Mars in the night sky may make it easy to find.

The International Space Station will have a busy month, receiving an empty Russian Soyuz capsule and a SpaceX spacecraft with a fresh crew of four astronauts.Roscosmos State Space Corporation, via Associated Press

Late in the month, two spacecraft could pull up to the International Space Station, each with important missions.

The first, as early as Feb. 20, will be an empty Russian Soyuz capsule. The spacecraft’s mission is to provide a trip home for a trio of Russian and American astronauts whose original ride was damaged during what was probably a micrometeoroid strike in December. That crew of astronauts had been expected to return to Earth in March, but may stay in orbit several more months.

The progress of that flight could affect the timing of Crew-6, a launch of four astronauts to the I.S.S. aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vessel that is to replace the four astronauts of Crew-5. Flying aboard Crew-6 are Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg of NASA, Andrey Fedyaev of Russia and Sultan Alneyadi, who will be the second astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to visit the station.

The first flights of new rockets (or first flights of existing rockets from new places) will be highlights of 2023.

January had a mixed start on this front. The company Rocket Lab had its first flight from a launchpad on Wallops Island in Virginia after earlier trips from its New Zealand home base. But an attempt by Virgin Orbit to launch the first orbital rocket from England failed. The company ABL Space Systems also experienced an “energetic explosion” during its first launch.

There are other rockets to keep an eye on in February. At the end of January, SpaceX completed a fueling test of Starship, its next generation orbital rocket prototype. The rocket is central to SpaceX’s ambitions of getting to Mars and NASA’s plans to get astronauts back on the moon. The company may next conduct a “static fire” this month — where the 33 engines on the rocket’s booster stage fire while the ship itself is held in place. If that succeeds, it could set up the rocket’s first flight to orbit in March.

Other launchers are also making progress. United Launch Alliance is preparing for the first flight of its new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which could fly during the first quarter of the year from Florida. Another company, Relativity Space, has also been on the launchpad in Florida with its Terran 1 rocket, and its first flight is expected soon.





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Russia to Launch Space Station Rescue Mission to Bring Astronauts Home

The capsule that carried three astronauts to orbit was damaged in December and will be replaced by another Soyuz spacecraft.

The Russian space agency said on Wednesday that it would send an empty Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station in February to replace a damaged spacecraft currently docked there.

“This is the next Soyuz that was scheduled to fly in March,” said Joel Montalbano, the space station program manager at NASA, during a news conference on Wednesday. “It’ll just fly a little earlier.”

The need for a new Soyuz arose after the one docked at the space station started spewing a spray of white particles on Dec. 14. The particles turned out to be coolant from the spacecraft, raising questions about whether part of the capsule could overheat during flight, rendering the craft unsafe to transport astronauts back to Earth.

A still image taken from a NASA video feed showed a spray of coolant emitting from the Soyuz spacecraft.NASA TV, via Reuters

The Soyuz is the only model of spacecraft Russia is using to transport astronauts to and from the I.S.S. The damaged vessel had arrived there in September, taking Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitriy Petelin of Russia and Frank Rubio of NASA to the space station. They had been scheduled to return to Earth in March, but the astronauts will now remain in orbit for several more months.

The next Soyuz, which would have carried three astronauts — two from Roscosmos, the state corporation that oversees Russia’s space industry, and one from NASA — will now launch with its seats empty on Feb. 20. After it reaches the space station, the damaged Soyuz will make a passengerless return to Earth, probably sometime in March. It is set to land at the usual return site in Kazakhstan, carrying some experiments and cargo.

After the leak occurred, astronauts used a camera at the end of a robotic arm on the space station to inspect the leak as engineers on the ground studied the damaged area.

Analysis indicated that with astronauts aboard, temperatures could rise to 100 degrees or hotter with high humidity within the confined space of the compromised Soyuz. That would not only pose dangers to the crew but could cause equipment like the Soyuz’s computer to malfunction.

Until the replacement Soyuz arrives, there is a higher level of risk in case of an emergency — like a large leak that might require an evacuation. The Soyuz and a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule serve as emergency lifeboats for the seven astronauts currently on the station. But officials were measured about the risks.

“I will tell you, there is no immediate need for the crew to come home today, that all the systems are operating,” Mr. Montalbano said.

During the news conference on Wednesday, Sergei Krikalev, executive director of the human spaceflight programs for Roscosmos, said the astronauts would try to remain on the station. In case of a leak, for example, they could close hatches to minimize the leak. But in some situations, the risk of returning in a damaged Soyuz would be lower than the risk of not leaving.

“The Soyuz is not good for nominal re-entry,” Mr. Krikalev said, “but in case of emergency, with extra risk, we are going to use this Soyuz.”

Mr. Montalbano said there had been discussions with SpaceX to see whether, for an emergency evacuation, it would be possible for one of the Soyuz crew to travel back to Earth in the Crew Dragon.

Mr. Krikalev said an investigation concluded that the damage was caused by a micrometeoroid about one millimeter in diameter that was traveling about seven kilometers a second, or more than 15,000 miles per hour. The micrometeoroid hit a radiator on the Soyuz, causing the coolant leak.

The location of the leak, at the end of the Soyuz farthest from the docking port, made it essentially impossible to attempt a repair in space. “You need not only to repair a hole but also to fill the radiator with a liquid, with a coolant,” Mr. Krikalev said. “And the procedure is so difficult and so risky that much less risk would be to just replace the vehicle.”

Mr. Krikalev said that based on the direction and speed, it could not have been a piece of orbital debris from a rocket part or some other human-made object. The question was prompted in part by a Russian antisatellite weapon test in November 2021 that created a debris cloud in orbit, which posed a risk to the space station.

“Some other object on this orbit cannot exist because if it has so high a velocity, it wouldn’t stay on this orbit,” Mr. Krikalev said. “It would leave this orbit.”

Mr. Montalbano said NASA agreed with that conclusion. “We are in the process of getting some additional imagery, but so far we are in concurrence with Roscosmos,” he said.

The shuffling of Soyuz crafts in February and March will also likely lead to NASA adjusting the schedule for other missions to the space station, including the next SpaceX Crew Dragon launch. “We’re going to take the next couple of weeks to kind of lay out the plan,” Mr. Montalbano said.





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Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Virgin Orbit Offers More Details on Rocket Failure

More than 110 miles above earth, the rocket’s second-stage engine prematurely shut down before entering orbit, causing the loss of nine satellites.

Virgin Orbit, the company that tried to launch satellites into space from Britain for the first time earlier this week, said on Thursday that a problem with the rocket’s second-stage engine about 110 miles above the earth caused the failure of the mission.

Virgin Orbit said in a statement that the problem, which it called an anomaly, “prematurely ended the first burn of the upper stage,” or second stage, of the rocket carrying the satellites. In other words the second-stage engine, which was supposed to lift the satellites high enough to begin orbit, shut down for some reason.

The company said that the rocket and its nine satellites fell to earth within what it called “the approved safety corridor.”

The rocket was launched from Virgin Orbit’s modified Boeing 747 that had taken off from Newquay airport in southwest England late Monday night. The plane and its crew returned safely, but Virgin Orbit clearly has work to do to maintain its business and its reputation.

The company, founded by Richard Branson and based in California, has only a handful of launches in the United States under its belt, but it aspires to establish itself as a global launch provider. The failure of its first international launch is obviously a blow to this effort as well as to Britain’s emerging space program.

Some of the satellites on board belonged to Britain, the United States and other governments, which are unlikely to feel much financial pain from the loss. But for one of the satellite makers, Horizon Technologies, a start-up based in Reading, England, the loss of its device could threaten the company’s existence.

John Beckner, the company’s chief executive, said Horizon had put $4 million into developing the marine intelligence satellite, a tiny device known as a cubesat, for a British government-funded organization, and that “for a company of our size, this loss, if not rectified, could be mortal.”

Mr. Beckner said he was “working with Virgin and the U.K. government in getting compensation for the loss.”

Mr. Beckner also said the company also hoped to launch further versions of the satellite.

When Virgin Orbit will be ready to launch again is unclear. The company said it anticipated returning to Newquay airport for additional launches, but that its next flight would be from its main base, in the Mojave Desert.

It said Jim Sponnick, a space industry veteran, was helping to lead an investigation into the causes of the failure.





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EPA Waste Ban Blocks Pebble Mine Project in Alaska

The move to ban disposal of mining wastes near the site of the proposed Pebble mine, made under the Clean Water Act, protects a valuable salmon fishery.

The Biden administration on Tuesday moved to protect one of the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries, at Bristol Bay in Alaska, by effectively blocking the development of a gold and copper mine there.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued a final determination under the Clean Water Act that bans the disposal of mine waste in part of the bay’s watershed, about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage. Streams in the watershed are crucial breeding grounds for salmon, but the area also contains deposits of precious-metal ores thought to be worth several hundred billion dollars.

A two-decades old proposal to mine those ores, called the Pebble project, has been supported by some Alaskan lawmakers and Native groups for the economic benefits it would bring, but opposed by others, including tribes around the bay and environmentalists who say it would do irreparable harm to the salmon population.

Alannah Hurley, executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, which has long opposed the mine, said the decision “was a real moment of justice for us.”

She said the tribes had long been told that “we just need to fall in line” and that the mine was inevitable. “Thank goodness our tribal leaders did not accept that,” Ms. Hurley said. “We’ll be celebrating this decision for decades to come.”

Michael Regan, the administrator of the E.P.A., said the decision came after an extensive review of scientific and technical research. “We’re committed to making science-based decisions within our regulatory authority that will provide durable protections for people and the planet,” Mr. Regan said. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing today.”

The company behind the mine project, Pebble Limited Partnership, called the E.P.A. action unlawful and unprecedented.

“The Biden E.P.A. continues to ignore fair and due process in favor of politics,” John Shively, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This pre-emptive action against Pebble is not supported legally, technically, or environmentally.”

The determination makes good on a campaign promise by President Biden to protect the bay. The sockeye salmon fishery there is the largest in the world, employing about 15,000 people and last year harvesting 60 million fish worth an estimated $350 million. The fishery’s economic benefits also extend beyond Alaska, particularly to Washington State.

In addition, Bristol Bay salmon is the basis for a thriving sport-fishing industry in Alaska and is a traditional subsistence food for many Natives in the region.

Mr. Shively said the company would likely appeal the determination. And there is the possibility that a future presidential administration that favors development of a mine could seek to somehow overturn it.

Determinations like this one, based on the 1972 Clean Water Act, are rare, with only three issued in the past 30 years, Mr. Regan said. This one, he said. was based on “very solid science.”

“Obviously, a final determination may be challenged in a federal court and we can’t predict what future administrations may or may not do,” he said. “But what we can assure everyone of is that there is a very solid record here.”

Machinery at the proposed mine site in 2007. The project called for a mine from which tens of millions of tons of rock ore would be removed annually.Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times, via Getty Images

In its determination, the agency said the Bristol Bay watershed, including streams that the salmon use for spawning, was a “significant resource of global conservation value.

The agency said that disposal of material from construction and operation of the mine would destroy 100 miles of streams and more than 2,100 acres of wetlands. It said an earlier Environmental Impact Statement, prepared during the Trump administration, which found that these losses would be inconsequential to fish populations, “did not represent an accurate and thorough assessment of likely impacts.”

The action is one of several recent moves by the Biden administration to protect environmentally sensitive lands from commercial interests.

Last week, the administration moved to establish a 20-year moratorium on mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, effectively blocking a long-disputed proposal for a copper and nickel mine. And the administration reinstated protections in the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska, overturning a Trump administration decision that would have allowed logging there.

Since it was first proposed in the early 2000s, the Pebble mine project has had a roller-coaster existence, its prospects lurching from bright to bleak over the years.

In the late 2000s it gained support from Alaska’s governor at the time, Sarah Palin, a pro-development Republican. But the E.P.A. in the Obama administration moved to block the mine in 2014, citing the Clean Water Act and the risks to the salmon fishery.

The agency under President Trump then reversed the Obama-era ruling, giving the project new life. Late in the Trump administration, however, after opposition from some Republicans, including the president’s son Donald Trump Jr., an avid sport fisherman, the United States Army Corps of Engineers denied the project a critical permit.

The Pebble partnership has appealed the corps’ decision. Radhika Fox, the assistant E.P.A. administrator for water, said that if the company were to succeed in the appeal, the Corps still could not approve the project, given the E.P.A. determination, unless it were somehow changed and the new proposal “does not have the similar adverse effects of this proposal.”

Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington, one of the first lawmakers to oppose the project, said she was “ecstatic” about the E.P.A. action. Washington State residents hold about a quarter of the commercial permits to fish for Bristol Bay sockeye, and much of the harvest passes through the state’s ports.

“This is such a big economic consequence to salmon and to the Northwest economy and lifestyle,” she said. “This isn’t just an Alaska issue.”

The Pebble proposal calls for an open-pit mine on a square mile of land, eventually dug to a depth of about 1,500 feet. Tens of millions of tons of rock ore would be removed annually and processed to extract gold and copper as well as molybdenum, which is used to strengthen steel in alloys.

The project would also include the construction of a power plant and pipeline for the gas to fuel it, as well as an access road and a port.

In 2020, Pebble executives were recorded saying they expected the project to become much bigger, and operate for much longer, than originally outlined. The executives, who were recorded by members of an environmental advocacy group posing as potential investors, said the mine could operate for 160 years or more beyond the proposed 20 years. And it could quickly double its output after the initial two decades, they said.

The comments eventually led to the resignation of the company’s chief executive at the time, Tom Collier.

The E.P.A. determination is the latest blow to the project. In December, the Conservation Fund, an environmental preservation organization, purchased conservation easements for 44,000 acres of land owned by a Native village corporation near Iliamna Lake, about 20 miles south of the proposed mine site and the area covered by the E.P.A. ruling.

The easements effectively block development and would make construction of an access road more difficult.





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Deer Could Be a Reservoir of Old Coronavirus Variants, Study Suggests

Even after Delta became the dominant variant in humans, Alpha and Gamma continued to circulate in white-tailed deer, according to new research.

The Alpha and Gamma variants of the coronavirus continued to circulate and evolve in white-tailed deer, even after they stopped spreading widely among people, a new study suggests.

Whether the variants are still circulating in deer remains unknown. “That’s the big question,” said Dr. Diego Diel, a virologist at Cornell University and an author of the study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Tuesday.

But the findings, which are based on samples collected through December 2021, provide more evidence that deer could be a reservoir of the virus and a potential source of future variants, which could spill back into human populations.

“It is a very large wildlife population in North America that has constant and very intense contact with humans,” Dr. Diel said.

Previous studies of deer have suggested humans have repeatedly introduced the coronavirus into white-tailed deer populations in the United States and Canada and that deer can spread the virus to one another. Scientists are not sure how people are passing the virus to deer, but they have speculated that it might happen when people feed deer or deer encounter human trash or waste.

The scale of the risk that infected deer pose to humans remains unclear. Scientists have documented one case that most likely resulted from deer-to-human transmission in Ontario, and they note that hunters and others who have regular contact with the animals could potentially catch the virus from them.

For the new study, Dr. Diel and his colleagues analyzed about 5,500 tissue samples collected from deer killed by hunters in New York State from September through December in the years 2020 and 2021.

During the 2020 season, just 0.6 percent of the samples tested positive for the virus, a figure that rose to 21 percent during the 2021 season.

Genetic sequencing revealed that three different variants of concern — Alpha, Gamma and Delta — were all present in deer during the 2021 season.

At the time, Delta was still prevalent among New York’s human residents. But Alpha and Gamma had practically vanished, especially in the rural parts of the state where the infected deer were found.

The scientists also compared the genomic sequences of the viral samples they detected in deer to those that had been collected from humans. In the deer, all three variants had new mutations that set them apart from the human sequences. But the Alpha and Gamma samples from deer diverged more significantly from the human sequences than the Delta samples from deer did, the researchers found.

Together, the results suggested that Alpha and Gamma had likely been circulating among deer and accumulating new mutations for months after spilling over from the human population, experts said.

“It supports the argument that deer can sustain lineages or variants that are no longer circulating in humans,” said Dr. Suresh Kuchipudi, a veterinary microbiologist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the new research.

The finding not only raises concerns that deer could be a source of new coronavirus variants that could spread back to people; it also raises the possibility that the virus might evolve in ways that pose a greater risk to wild animals, he added. “It could also end up becoming an animal health problem,” Dr. Kuchipudi said.

The study highlights the need for ongoing surveillance of wild deer populations, Dr. Kuchipudi and Dr. Diel said. Dr. Diel and his colleagues are preparing to analyze deer samples from the 2022 hunting season to determine whether the virus remains widespread among deer and which variants may be circulating.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that deer hunters take a variety of basic precautions to reduce the risk of infection, including wearing masks while handling game and washing hands thoroughly afterward.





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At NASA, Thomas Zurbuchen Was Ready to Let Some Missions Fail

Thomas Zurbuchen concluded six years leading NASA’s science directorate, during which he presided over some of the agency’s biggest successes.

Dr. Z has left the building.

After six years, Thomas Zurbuchen concluded his tenure as the head of NASA’s science missions at the end of 2022.

During his time there, he earned his single-letter nickname while presiding over some of the agency’s biggest successes in the exploration of the solar system and the universe: the long-delayed launch of the James Webb Space Telescope; the landing on Mars of the Perseverance rover, which was accompanied by the Ingenuity helicopter; and the slamming of the DART spacecraft into a small asteroid, demonstrating a technique that could be used if a space rock were discovered on a collision course with Earth.

“Immensely proud of what we’ve achieved as a team,” Dr. Zurbuchen said in an interview. “Also sad to leave the team that is here, the job that I’ve really loved.”

Dr. Zurbuchen held the job of associate administrator for the science directorate for a longer continuous stretch than any of his predecessors.

It is a job that is akin to running a space agency within a space agency. NASA’s science directorate has a budget — $7.8 billion for the current fiscal year — that is larger than that of the entire European Space Agency. In addition to planetary science and astrophysics, the directorate also oversees earth science research.

For Dr. Zurbuchen, 54, it was time to leave.

He said it was important for the science directorate to be led by someone who was pushing new ideas, as NASA had already implemented many of his. While he still enjoyed the job, he said that in the seventh year of putting together and implementing budgets, he was learning less. “Those two things made me think about, ‘How do I find the right exit?’” he said.

Bill White/NASA

But he is gone before seeing whether one of his biggest bets — higher-risk, lower-cost collaborations with small private companies to send science instruments to the moon — will pay off.

The program is known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS. That continued a shift at NASA, similar to how it now relies on companies like SpaceX to provide transportation of astronauts and cargo to the space station.

When CLPS was announced in 2018, Dr. Zurbuchen said NASA was aiming to take “shots on goal,” a soccer or hockey metaphor that acknowledged that not every shot scores and that not every CLPS mission would successfully arrive at its destination intact.

NASA officials said then that the first CLPS mission could launch as soon as the following year, in 2019, and the aim was to fly two CLPS missions each year.

But today none of them have yet reached the launchpad. Instead of eight missions already, there are still zero shots on goal.

“CLPS has not proven itself,” Dr. Zurbuchen conceded, although two launches are on the schedule for 2023. One lander is from Intuitive Machines of Houston, to be launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; the other lander is from Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, riding on the maiden flight of United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket.

If both companies succeed on their first tries, NASA officials will certainly celebrate. But except for successes by China, all of the robotic moon landing attempts in recent years have crashed. What if one of the CLPS missions fails? Or both?

Bill Ingalls/NASA

The key, he said, is to take smart risks, and not to panic if not all of the risks pay off. “The fastest way of turning off all innovation is to punish the people who do listen to you and actually are trying new things,” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “Let’s not kill them.”

The next associate administrator would have to decide how to adjust course.

“After how many CLPS failures do we say, ‘Hey, it’s not working?’” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “It’s an experiment, right? There is no way to get to the moon otherwise for substantially less than a billion bucks. And that’s what we tried to break, that cost of entry.”

Dr. Zurbuchen was in some ways an unusual choice for the job. A native of Switzerland, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Bern and completed considerable research on solar science. He had led the development of one of the instruments on NASA’s Messenger spacecraft that had orbited Mercury, but Dr. Zurbuchen had never worked at NASA.

In 2016, Dr. Zurbuchen, then a professor at the University of Michigan and founding director of the university’s Center for Entrepreneurship, got a phone call from John Grunsfeld, then the NASA associate administrator for science. Dr. Grunsfeld said he was planning to step down and told Dr. Zurbuchen that he should apply for the position.

In an interview, Dr. Grunsfeld said he had not been involved in selecting his successor, “but I wanted to make sure that there was a good pool of candidates.”

He thought candidates should “share some of the philosophy for new concepts and advancing science that I have,” Dr. Grunsfeld said.

Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

NASA’s science directorate runs big projects like the James Webb Space Telescope with budgets that run into the billions of dollars. But there were also scientific opportunities for using tiny CubeSats. “I knew that he was interested in those things,” Dr. Grunsfeld said.

Dr. Grunsfeld announced his retirement from NASA in April 2016. In October of that year, Dr. Zurbuchen was named as the new associate administrator for science.

He had a few goals coming into the job. “Rule 1,” he said, “is don’t break it.”

But he also felt that NASA leaders could do a better job. “I think it’s always easy to say, ‘Space is hard — that’s why we have management problems,’” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “But I just don’t think it’s a carte blanche. I think we should do our best job so if we get surprised, we can actually explain why we missed it.”

How NASA executed its ambitious missions “was really, really important because it actually gave trust in how we deal with taxpayers’ money,” he said. “Within just a few months, I terminated the first mission.”

The was the Radiation Budget Instrument, which was to have measured sunlight reflecting off the Earth. The project experienced technical problems and spiraling costs. “What I really felt was important is that we looked at the opportunity set and basically asked, ‘Is there a way to get more science or more science per dollar?’” Dr. Zurbuchen said.

For earth science data, NASA now buys much of it from commercial satellite companies instead of building its own spacecraft. “Close to 1,500 scientists within the United States are doing research on these data,” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “Totally new way of doing that.”

Aubrey Gemignani/NASA

Not all of the new ways of doing business have worked. For example, NASA selected some missions that were to put scientific devices on commercial communication satellites headed to geostationary orbit, at altitudes of more than 22,000 miles. But with a shift in the telecommunications industry, there are fewer geostationary satellites being launched now. “We basically lost our rides,” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “So our commercial partnerships did not work. We’re sitting on the ground.”

The biggest challenge was getting the James Webb Space Telescope, which was going awry with technical and management problems, back on track. “Basically asking the question, ‘Is it worth finishing?’” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “Not knowing what the answer was and going through the process was really, really hard.”

The Webb telescope was finally launched in December 2021, and it provided Dr. Zurbuchen’s favorite moment, too, when he saw the telescope’s first deep-space image before President Biden released it publicly.

“At that point, there were only a couple of handfuls of humans that had seen that — with a telescope that we built and struggled with enormously,” Dr. Zurbuchen said. “It was a quintessential moment, both of human achievement but also history made, NASA style.”





#Space | https://sciencespies.com/space/at-nasa-thomas-zurbuchen-was-ready-to-let-some-missions-fail/
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