With hopes dimming for retrieving the lost CONTOUR (Comet Nucleus Tour) spacecraft, Cornell science team members are now discussing a new mission: CONTOUR 2.
Speaking at a telephone press conference with reporters around the country Monday, Aug. 26, the mission's science-team leader Joseph Veverka, Cornell professor of astronomy, said, "It is our posture that should we not be able to recover CONTOUR, we are going to proceed aggressively with CONTOUR 2." There are opportunities to do this, he said, beginning with a comet-encounter [mission] in 2006.
He also noted that, "there is nothing that seems to stay in the way of CONTOUR 2 except raising funds to make it possible." And there have been no indications from NASA that another mission might be possible, he said, "because we are working on the plan for CONTOUR 2 and we haven't presented it to anyone."
NASA ground controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, which was launched on July 3, after its main solid-propellant rocket engine fired on cue on Aug. 15. Telescope images indicated the spacecraft had broken into three pieces. After days of continual monitoring for signals from the craft, on Aug. 23 the mission team scaled back on its search. Mission operators are now listening for a signal just once a week, for about eight hours at a time.
On Monday, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced that the space agency's chief engineer, Theron M. Bradley Jr., will lead a team to investigate the apparent loss of the space probe. The team will include a team of internal NASA investigators from space science, as well as other aerospace disciplines, and external experts with extensive experience in accident examinations. The group is expected to report its initial findings in six to eight weeks.
The $159 million mission was to have visited two, and perhaps three, comets to probe each nucleus, the rocky, icy heart around which dust and gases coalesce. Veverka noted that the same comets -- Encke and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 -- would be available for a second mission in 2006. "We have selected these targets for specific scientific reasons, and so, to the extent possible, we would like to maintain some of those targets, and it seems possible," he said.
Robert Farquhar, the mission director at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), said a replacement mission could be ready for launch by April 2006. APL's Edward Reynolds, CONTOUR project manager, said the spacecraft could be rebuilt at a savings of $10 million to $20 million.
Veverka agreed that there could be substantial cost savings. "We will be trying to minimize cost, and if we don't need a solid rocket motor, there is no need to use it, and we can save the money." Also, he said, "there is no real reason to change the instrumentation. The instruments we developed were excellent, so we will probably fly with the same," he said.
Several jobs are on the line if the spacecraft isn't found, mission planners said in answer to reporters' questions. Reynolds said that the peak workforce for CONTOUR was about 147. Veverka said the science team consists of another 50 to 60 people across the United States and Europe, including the 20 science team members, plus research associates and students. However, he said, a lot of these people would "definitely" be interested in working with a second mission because of the "important science" involved.
Meanwhile, the watch for the lost spacecraft will continue through December. "We're not very optimistic about the chances of ever recovering CONTOUR again, but we haven't given up," said Farquhar. In the second week of December, he said, there will be a concentrated effort to locate the spacecraft's pancake (multidirectional) antenna, which, if it is still functional, will be focused on the Earth for two to three days. "Even then we don't have a lot of hope that we'll recover it, but we will make that last effort," he said.
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