Experiences in Managing the Prometheus Project

Congress authorized NASA's Prometheus Project in February 2003, with the first Prometheus mission slated to explore the icy moons of Jupiter. The project had two major objectives: 1) to develop a nuclear reactor that would provide unprecedented levels of power and show that it could be processed safely and operated reliably in space for long-duration, deep-space exploration; and 2) to explore the three icy moons of Jupiter - Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa - and return science data that would meet the scientific goals as set forth in the Decadal Survey Report of the National Academy of Sciences. Early in project planning, it was determined that the development of the Prometheus nuclear-powered spaceship would be complex and require the intellectual knowledge residing at numerous organizations across the country. In addition, because of the complex nature of the project and the multiple partners, approaches beyond those successfully used to manage a typical JPL project would be needed. This describes the key experiences in managing Prometheus, which should prove useful for future projects of similar scope and magnitude.     

Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL): Mapping the Lunar Interior from Crust to Core

The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) is a spacecraft-to-spacecraft tracking mission that was developed to map the structure of the lunar interior by producing a detailed map of the gravity field. The resulting model of the interior will be used to address outstanding questions regarding the Moon’s thermal evolution, and will be applicable more generally to the evolution of all terrestrial planets. Each GRAIL orbiter contains a Lunar Gravity Ranging System instrument that conducts dual-one-way ranging measurements to measure precisely the relative motion between them, which in turn are used to develop the lunar gravity field map. Each orbiter also carries an Education/Public Outreach payload, Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle-School Students (MoonKAM), in which middle school students target images of the Moon for subsequent classroom analysis. Subsequent to a successful launch on September 10, 2011, the twin GRAIL orbiters embarked on independent trajectories on a 3.5-month-long cruise to the Moon via the EL-1 Lagrange point. The spacecraft were inserted into polar orbits on December 31, 2011 and January 1, 2012. After a succession of 19 maneuvers the two orbiters settled into precision formation to begin science operations in March 1, 2012 with an average altitude of 55 km. The Primary Mission, which consisted of three 27.3-day mapping cycles, was successfully completed in June 2012. The extended mission will permit a second three-month mapping phase at an average altitude of 23 km. This paper provides an overview of the mission: science objectives and measurements, spacecraft and instruments, mission development and design, and data flow and data products.