The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter was once audacious in different ways, equivalent to the use of a touchdown part to immediately pattern Europa’s ice. Sadly, the undertaking additionally was insanely pricey, with the cheap blasting previous $20 billion. When O’Keefe was once changed via a brand new administrator in 2005, Mike Griffin, the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter was once placed on ice.
Galileo sparked an improbable quantity of hobby in Europa. First, NASA attempted a quick, affordable undertaking. Then the company labored at the maximum bold spacecraft thought ever put ahead. Each failed. A decade was once misplaced.
A brand new champion emerges
In 2000, a conservative Texas lawyer named John Culberson received election to the USA Area of Representatives for the primary time. For a time, he interested in native problems, equivalent to highway development within the higher Houston house. Then again, after the cancellation of the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, he was once livid.
Most of the people in Congress, to the level they care about NASA, achieve this for parochial pursuits and native jobs. For Culberson, that supposed Johnson House Heart, which was once positioned in a district adjoining to his. However Culberson was once additionally deeply excited by planetary exploration, and he sought after to be related to NASA’s first undertaking to search out existence on some other global. So he was an recommend of investment for a NASA middle at the reverse facet of the rustic, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which led the company’s robot exploration efforts.
As a member of the Area Appropriations Committee, Culberson started to tuck investment into NASA’s funds for the continued learn about of a Europa orbiter.
All the way through this era, as a science reporter for the Houston Chronicle, I started to stumble upon Culberson at quite a lot of occasions round the city. He was once each a conservative Christian flesh presser and a life-long science geek. Skeptic that I’m, I questioned if his hobby in science was once an act to ingratiate himself with constituents, for the reason that the Houston house has a big biomedical group. Ultimately, alternatively, I started to understand it was once utterly authentic. He’s excited about the Sun Gadget and needs to grasp extra about its starting place and whether or not it harbors existence on worlds rather then Earth. We bonded over this mutual hobby.
