UPDATE:  The crew landed as planned at 7:45 am ET.

Russia’s Soyuz TMA-22 undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) at 4:18 am ET and is on its way home.  The deorbit burn is scheduled for 6:49 am ET, with landing at 7:45 am ET in Kazakshtan.

Aboard are three ISS crewmembers:  American Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin.  They were aboard ISS for five-and-a-half months.

NASA TV has live coverage of the landing and reports that weather at the landing site is “ideal.”

With space shuttles whizzing above us in the skies and Congress busy at work funding NASA and other space activities, it’s easy to forget that there is a space station in orbit right now with six hard working astronauts and cosmonauts aboard.   Until tomorrow, that is, when three will return to Earth.  They will soon be replaced by three new crewmembers, however, so not to worry.

The three coming home very early tomorrow, Friday, April 27, are American Dan Burbank and Russians Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin.  They have been on the International Space Station (ISS) for five-and-a-half months.  They will undock from ISS at 4:18 am ET and land in Kazakhstan at 7:45 am. 

Three other ISS crew members will remain aboard — commander Oleg Kononenko (Russia) and flight engineers Andre Kuipers (European Space Agency) and Don Pettit (U.S.).  They wll be joined by three new crewmates on May 17.

Follow the undocking and landing on  NASA TV.

The draft bill that the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee is scheduled to markup tomorrow morning would allocate $150 million to “Mars Next Decade.”   However, the bill also requires the National Research Council (NRC) to certify that the new Mars program will lead to accomplishment of a Mars sample return mission as dictated by the recent NRC Decadal Survey for planetary science or the money will be reallocated to study Jupiter’s moon Europa.

Mars Next Decade is the new integrated plan NASA is developing to replace the Mars strategy it recently abandoned for budgetary reasons.  The previous plan was for a series of robotic missions conducted in cooperation with the European Space Agency (ESA) beginning in 2016 and 2018.  Those two missions would be followed by others that were to collect and store (“cache”) samples from different parts of Mars and eventually return them to Earth for analysis.   NASA formally notified ESA that it would not be able to participate in those missions after the FY2013 President’s budget request was released showing a 21 percent cut to NASA’s planetary science budget in FY2013 and additional cuts in subsequent years.

NASA is now developing a new Mars exploration strategy, Mars Next Decade, that responds to the needs of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) as well as the Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, with input from the Office of Chief Technologist and Office of Chief Scientist.  NASA officials stress that President Obama directed the agency to develop a plan to send humans to the vicinity of Mars in the 2030s and thus a plan in needed that addresses not only science but human exploration requirements.

The draft bill would increase the total amount available for SMD in FY2013 from the $4.911 billion requested to $5.095 billion, of which $150 million is designated for Mars Next Decade.   The bill requires, however, that the NRC certify to Congress that “the chosen mission concept will lead to the accomplishment of Mars sample return as described in the most recent [NRC] decadal survey.”   If the NRC cannot make that certification,  the money “shall be reallocated to the development of a Jupiter Europa orbiter, consistent with the priorities in the aformentioned decadal survey.”

Jupiter is one of the outer planets (beyond the asteroid belt) and members of the planetary science community who focus on that region of the solar system have been arguing for a new “outer planets flagship” mission for years.   Flagship missions are the most complicated and expensive missions in SMD’s stable, usually requiring innovative technologies and promising breakthrough scientific results.  The NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission is the most recent outer planets flagship mission.  Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004 and is still studying the planet and its moons.  One of the moons, Titan, has an atmosphere and has been the object of intense scientific interest for many decades.  An ESA-built probe, Huygens, detached from Cassini and traversed Titan’s atmosphere in 2005 and landed on its surface.   Huygens providing tantalizing images that whetted the appetite of scientists and the public for more.

In addition to Cassini, two other missions are currently headed to the outer solar system.  Both are more modest missions, but still will produce exciting science.   The New Horizons mission was launched in 2006 and will reach Pluto in 2015, and the Juno mission was launched last year for its 5-year journey to Jupiter.   They and Cassini are expected to complete their missions by about 2017-2018 and outer planet scientists want a new mission to replace them.

There are many fascinating places to visit in the outer solar system, however.   Scientists are especially eager to study another Saturnian moon, Enceladus, and one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa.   Liquid water may exist there, with the consequent possibility of life.

Choosing among the many places to visit within a constrained budget is a task left to the NRC and its decadal survey process wherein the relevant science community reaches consensus after significant debate on the top scientific priorities for a given 10-year period (a decade, hence the term “decadal survey”).   The most recent NRC planetary science decadal survey ranked returning a sample of Mars to Earth as its first priority for a flagship mission, with a Europa mission second.  The report laid out decision criteria for which of its top priority flagship missions should proceed depending on mission costs and funding availability.

The current fiscal environment was not envisioned when that study began, however.  With intense focus today on cutting the federal deficit, many agenices are in fiscal distress, including NASA.   In the FY2013 budget request,  NASA’s planetary science budget took the biggest cut of all of NASA’s mission areas.   The planetary science community is not just hoping, but expecting, Congress to come to the rescue.  It appears they are correct.  The Senate Appropriations CJS subcommittee marked up its version of the bill yesterday, adding $100 million for Mars exploration.  The text of that bill has not been released, so whether it includes similar provisions about obtaining an NRC certification that any new Mars mission conforms with the decadal survey is unclear.  The full Senate Appropriations Committee will markup that bill tomorrow morning also.

The House CJS subcommittee markup is at 9:30 am ET tomorrow morning in H-140 Capitol.   The Senate full committee markup of the CJS bill is at 10:30 in 192 Dirksen.

Details remain scant, but NASA held a teleconference today to provide an update on the work of the Mars Program Planning Group (MPPG) headed by Orlando Figueroa.  The MPPG was created when NASA had to dramatically change its plans for future robotic Mars exploration because of budget constraints that forced it to pull out of a cooperative effort with the European Space Agency (ESA).

At today’s media teleconference, John Grunsfeld, Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), and Doug McCuistion, head of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, joined Figueroa in explaining the scope and timetable for the MPPG.   Figueroa said that he made a preliminary report to Grunsfeld a week and a half ago.  The next major step will be a workshop in June at the Lunar and Planetary Institute to obtain input from a broad cross section of the global science and technical community, which is encouraged to submit abstracts to bring forward ideas that “will inform a strategy for exploration within available resources, beginning as early as 2018,” according to NASA’s press release.   The final report from the MPPG is due to Grunsfeld in August.

The report is intended to provide options and pathways for the future of an integrated Mars exploration program that brings together the goals of SMD and the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD).   Grunsfeld, a former astronaut, emphasizes that President Obama directed NASA to send humans to the vicinity of Mars in the 2030s and robotic missions are needed to work in concert with NASA’s human exploration office, along with NASA’s technology office, to achieve that goal.

August is an interesting time for such a report to emerge.   NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) with its Curiosity rover is due to land at Gale Crater on Mars on August 6 EDT (August 5 PDT).   The mission involves a never-before-used landing system called a sky crane that adds another layer of risk to what is always a risky endeavor — landing a spacecraft on Mars.  When the chair of the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Space Studies Board asked a panel of NASA science officials last week “what keeps you awake at night,” Jim Green, director of NASA’s planetary science division, replied the “seven minutes of terror from the top of the [Mars] atmosphere to landing.”

Leonard David, reporting for Aerospace America, asked at today’s teleconference what will happen to the MPPG results if the Curiosity landing fails.   Would congressional support for a new Mars mission dim if Curiosity — a $2.5 billion mission — crashes, he queried?   The NASA officials avoided a direct answer to the question, although Grunsfeld eventually responded by emphasizing that all such missions are very risky and there are “no guarantees,” but he thinks interest in Mars will continue to be strong regardless.

In response to a question, McCuistion revealed that the money for a new Mars mission based on whatever comes out of the MPPG report is already in his budget, though all funding in the out-years is notional.    Grunsfeld has been quoted in other venues as saying the cost of the mission will be about $700 million and one question expected to arise in the planetary science community is whether those funds are best spent on a Mars mission.

The NRC issues “Decadal Surveys” for NASA’s space and earth science disciplines every 10 years.  The most recent planetary science Decadal Survey was published last year.   Ordinarily, NRC Decadal Surveys are rigorously followed by NASA because they represent a consensus of the relevant science community and because Congress holds them in high esteem.

The first Decadal Survey for planetary exploration in 2003 dealt with Mars separately from the rest of the planetary exploration program.   This time, however, NASA directed the NRC to consider Mars as part of planetary exploration generally rather than as a special subset.  As the 2011 report Decadal Survey states, “Priorities for the Moon, Mars and other solar system bodies were treated in a unified manner with no pre-determined ‘set-asides” for specific bodies.   This approach differs distinctly from the ground rules for the 2003 planetary science decadal survey, in which missions to Mars were prioritized separately.”

With all of NASA’s planetary exploration program under stress, questions are almost certain to arise about why the $700 million is already being allocated to Mars before a study has concluded that it can be wisely used to advance our understanding of Mars in accordance with the priorities laid out in the Decadal Survey.

At a meeting of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) in March, Cornell University’s Steve Squyres, who chaired the planetary science Decadal Survey and is now chair of the NASA Advisory Council said that a new Mars mission would conform with the Decadal Survey only if it advanced the goal of returning a sample of Mars to Earth — the 2011 Decadal Survey’s top priority for large planetary science missions.  The two Mars missions with ESA that were cancelled in the FY2013 budget request were part of a series of missions to accomplish that goal.  ESA is now planning to proceed with the first of the two missions, ExoMars, with Russia instead of the United States.

The frequent reference to the need for NASA to develop an integrated approach for Mars exploration addressing the combined goals of SMD and HEOMD prompts a related question about why so little attention is being made to advancing a nearer-term goal expounded by the President — sending astronauts to visit an asteroid by 2025.    That also would require an integrated approach by SMD and HEOMD.  Some scientists insist that one requirement is to launch a spacecraft designed to search for candidate asteroids that cannot be observed from Earth.   A “Venus-trailing” spacecraft that could view a much larger part of the sky is needed for such observations, they argue.  Although it was considered in a different context, a 2009 NRC report on the potential threat to Earth from asteroids and comets (“Near Earth Objects”) described such an asteroid-hunting mission as costing about $600 million.

The message of today’s press conference was that NASA is looking for innovative ideas for robotic Mars exploration that fit into the agency’s longer term goal of sending humans to Mars and its constrained budget.  Convincing the planetary science community and its supporters that another Mars mission is more important than other planetary exploration missions waiting their turn may be a challenging task, and whether it advances President Obama’s goals for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit  — which starts with a human mission to an asteroid, not to Mars — is an open question.