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WASHINGTON – NASA chose a space weather experiment to travel to the International Space Station while its heliophysics program aimed to balance large and small missions.
NASA announced Feb. 25 that it would conduct Atmospheric Wave Experiment (AWE) to the ISS in August 2022. AWE will study the effects of solar activity and terrestrial weather conditions on the upper atmosphere by monitoring infrared radiation in this region.
AWE, which is estimated to cost $ 42 million, was one of two finalists selected by NASA in July 2017 as a heliophysics mission for NASA's Small Explorers Program. The other finalist was an experiment with the Sun Radio Space Interferometer (SunRISE), a constellation of cubesats acting as a synthetic aperture radio telescope to study the formation of solar storms.
SunRISE received a consolation prize in the form of an "extended formulation" study valued at US $ 100,000 for the next seven months to improve the mission design. However, it is unclear what will be the future of the mission concept once this study is completed.
Nicky Fox, director of the heliophysics division of NASA, said at a meeting of the committee of national academies that the choice of the mission of opportunity was "imminent" but without further specifying the moment NASA announces the winning mission. . Later in the day, at the same meeting, she announced that NASA had selected AWE.
In addition to the Explorers opportunity mission, an ongoing competition is underway for a Small Explorers Heliophysics mission, or SMEX, to conduct space and solar physics work. NASA has selected five proposals in July 2017 for Phase A studies. A decision on one or more of them is also expected shortly.
"We are making the final pieces for selection among these five", such as site visits, she said. She declined to say whether NASA could select more than one SMEX proposal, citing the current competitive procurement process. The agency hopes to announce this selection in April, she said later in the meeting.
The heliophysics division is preparing for the next competitive mission selection, a middle class mission, or MIDEX. An Opportunity Announcement (AO) project will be released in March, Fox said, and a final release will follow in June. This schedule was not affected by the partial closure of the government that lasted five weeks. The winning MIDEX mission will fly by early 2026, with a cost cap of $ 250 million.
Fox was speaking at a meeting of a mid-term review committee for the Decadal Solar and Spatial Physics Survey, published in 2012. One of the recommendations in this report was to expand the Explorers program. in heliophysics, alternating SMEX and MIDEX missions. every two to three years.
Fox argued that NASA was following this recommendation with its current pace of missions. "We are absolutely in line with the recommendations," she said, with the selected SMEX missions being offered in 2016 and the upcoming MIDEX contest. "I think we are doing very well."
NASA plans to build on this momentum, although it has made it clear that the planning of Explorer mission competitions in the 2020s is still fictitious. This would also include alternating between SMEX and MIDEX, assuming sufficient budgets. "I think the goal would be to do that," she said. "I think it's good for the community to do that too."
One of the objectives of the Explorer missions is to balance the smallest number of major heliophysical missions, such as the Parker Solar Probe mission launched last year. The community is concerned that Parker, with a total cost of more than $ 1 billion, will experience overruns that would compromise this balance, but the mission has not exceeded its cost ceiling.
"It's a good time to be a heliophysicist," said at the Fox Committee meeting, previously a Parker Solar Probe scientist, highlighting the pace of the missions. "As someone from the community that joined NASA, I can say that it made a big difference. The excitement of knowing that there is going to be an AO coming out. "
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