4
Upcoming New Frontiers 5 Announcement of Opportunity

The New Frontiers (NF) program is meant to support medium-sized, principal investigator (PI)-led missions that bridge flagship missions and the Discovery program at a launch cadence of 60 months. Three NF missions have been flown: New Horizons launched in 2006, Juno launched in 2011, and OSIRIS-REx launched in 2016, maintaining the optimal cadence. Dragonfly, the NF-4 selection, is expected to launch no earlier than 2028. The delay of the Dragonfly launch will create at least a 12-year gap in NF launches. With the delay of the NF-5 announcement of opportunity (AO) to no earlier than 2026, the next NF mission would likely launch no earlier than 2033, within the next decadal. NF-5 is currently the only confirmed AO that will happen in this decade, and even that could be at risk in the current fiscal environment. It is therefore critical that the next AO include missions that directly address the priority science questions identified therein. This goal can be accomplished with a list of targets that includes missions on both the NF-5 draft AO and NF-6 lists recommended in Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023–2032 (NASEM 2023; hereafter, OWL).

OWL gave careful consideration to the number of NF-6 and NF-7 mission themes to be prioritized:

The recommendation of seven missions is in keeping with the original number of NF-5 missions, the number of NF-4 AO (six mission themes), the NF-5 draft AO (seven mission themes), and the sentiment expressed in OWL to find a balance between breadth of science questions and manageable number of concepts the community can pursue. NF mission proposals require enormous resources at the three participating entities and associated contractors, and limiting mission themes prevents the scenario in which the management resources of the proposing centers are not the deciding factor on which mission themes are proposed. In light of the current declining budget and NASA mission portfolio, this balance is consistent with 7 recommended targets. Furthermore, CAPS has previously recommended that NF themes be reconsidered for or removed from an AO based on programmatic balance. For example, the Committee on Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences previously recommended that NASA reconsider the inclusion of Ocean Worlds (Titan) in the NF theme because of programmatic balance, where programmatic balance includes not only the mission themes within any one AO, but also considers the entire NASA Planetary Science Division (PSD) fleet.

Finding 8: Given that NASA anticipates that the New Frontiers (NF)-5 announcement of opportunity will be announced no earlier than 2026, it is important to assemble a mission list for this upcoming call that can address the broadest range of priority science questions identified in Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023–2032 (NASEM 2023).

Finding 9: Based on the findings of the committee, the next New Frontiers announcement of opportunity would be most effective if it includes the following themes, listed alphabetically:

• Centaur Orbiter and Lander
• Ceres Sample Return
• Comet Surface Sample Return
• Enceladus Multiple Flyby
• Io Observer
• Lunar Geophysical Network
• Saturn Probe

The committee recognizes that the current cadence of NF AOs is far outside both the original intent of the NF program and the recommendations included in each planetary science decadal surveys of two per decade. In fact, the committee itself has twice made interim findings to accommodate the delayed cadence of the NF-5 AO. This departure from the original and recommended cadence has several implications.

First, the cadence is no longer synchronized with the decadal surveys that conduct extensive reviews of the priority mission themes and put forward a recommended program. Each decadal review strives to strike a balance between scientific priorities, programmatic balance, and cost estimates (as compared to AO cost caps); however, a delayed and increasingly unpredictable mission cadence undermines the recommended program as outlined by each decadal survey. Without a regular cadence, the NF mission theme list will continue to expand without accomplishing previously prioritized missions. These factors all undermine the fulfillment of the recommended balanced program of the decadal surveys. As NASA considers how to best accommodate an ever-growing list of high science priority missions within its proposal structure, it is critical to incorporate mechanisms that allow for development of mission concept studies for emerging targets of opportunity.

Finding 10: New Frontiers (NF) mission cadence is critical to programmatic balance. Without a predictable cadence aligned with the decadal surveys, the NF mission theme list will continue to expand without accomplishing previously prioritized missions, jeopardizing decadal survey priorities.

Second, an extension of the program cadence also has significant budgetary implications. Cost estimates for mission themes put forward by the decadal surveys are often outdated by the time the AO is released, owing to both inflationary pressure and increased costs because of supply chain issues since the mission costs were estimated. The extended length of time since the selection of NF-4, together with recent financial and budgetary landscape, creates a disconnect between the estimated costs of NF-5 and NF-6 targets recommended in OWL and the NF-5 cost cap proposed in the 2023 draft NF-5 AO. This is also complicated by the uncertainty for the present-day costs of the missions advanced from the NF-4 AO list, whose costs were not assessed through the technical risk and cost evaluation process in the OWL report.

Finding 11: Due to factors such as inflationary pressure and supply chain challenges, the draft New Frontiers (NF)-5 announcement of opportunity cost cap is likely insufficient for many of the mission themes considered here and therefore merits reconsideration by NASA.

Ultimately, delays in cadence cause budgetary pressures that subsequently cause further delays, producing an unsustainable cycle in the NF program. Owing to these factors, timely release of the NF-5 AO to return to the two per decade cadence of medium-class missions recommended by the decadal surveys is vital. However, the committee also recognizes that increases to the cost caps in the current budget climate could have adverse effects on mission cadence.

The committee recognizes that NASA and the administration alone cannot fix the cadence of NF missions, and it is beyond the remit of this report to recommend potential solutions. However, the committee, along with other consensus studies (NASEM 2024) continue to highlight and be concerned by this difficult problem.