Cosmic Vision Contracts

The European Space Agency announced in November that unexpected expenses have forced it to cancel Eddington, a combined planet-seeking and asteroseismology mission, and scale back Bepi-Colombo, a mission to Mercury with the Japanese space agency JAXA.

Without Eddington, says the Norwegian Space Centre’s Bo Andersen, a member of ESA’s scientific program committee, “we will not get an unbiased number of the abundance of Earth-like planets in our galaxy.” The asteroseismology loss is even larger, he adds, because “we will not get the expected increase—factors of 10 to 1000—in accuracy of central parameters of stellar evolution, age, element abundances, [or] internal rotation of several hundred thousand stars.” Eddington was added in 2002 to ESA’s Cosmic Vision, the agency’s space exploration plans through 2012 (see Physics Today, August 2002, page 24 ). Bepi-Colombo will still fly, but will be delayed by about two years. More painful, a planned lander has been scrapped, reducing the mission to two orbiters.

Chief among the added costs that necessitated the cuts are those incurred from delays to the Rosetta comet mission because of the failed Ariane 5 launcher (see Physics Today, March 2003, page 28 ). Also taking a toll were making early payments to keep the European space industry afloat and covering expenses for ESA member states and other partner organizations that defaulted on their contributions to various missions.

The cuts to Eddington and Bepi-Colombo save around €450 million ($536 million). The financial juggling also includes a loan of €100 million to keep Rosetta on track for launch next month. The revised program is affordable, says Andersen, but it is “a scientifically unacceptable program because it kills off fields where Europe is in the lead.”