Cold war, and boomers Link to heading

Modern Planetary (Geo)Science was born as a by-produt of Cold War, more or less. But was mostly flourishing in (western) peacetime - say - between the 1970s and mid 2020s. Like a lot of (pure) science, it is a peacetime luxury.

One can find around books (Bleeker et al., 2001), articles (e.g., Bonnet, 2001, Stevenson, 2000) or just for a start wikipedia pages. Yes, one can — and should — trace it back to Galileo et al. (see e.g., Burns, 2010, if not even yours truly & van Gasselt, 2018). But at the end of the day NASA Apollo made it start to be what it became.

After all, not too far away from — say — Plate Tectonics benefiting from WW2 search for (German) U-boats via fluxgate magnetometers¹, among other evidences, some older than others. But the key difference, in our case, is that it was not only a technological development enabling discoveries. It was something that was developed in purpose for actually reaching, and exploring the Moon. And applied science (e.g., to detect submarines…) is a wartime tool that either becomes or enables peacetime luxuries such as… planetary science and exploration, as we know them.

All the references above were written in boomer/post-boomer times. Or at least when it was not quite apparent how fragile what we all considered granted was (i.e., sustained public funding of planetary science and exploration). This is clearly not the case anymore. Quoting the closing of the paper of Roger Bonnet above (written a quarter of a century ago) still is very interesting:

The winners of the 21st Century are those who will invest enough to create and exploit education and knowledge for their benefit. The US is on the winning track; Europe has still some way to go! But it can also win, providing a strong political vision prevails at the level of the Union.

What changed largely since then is that China took the challenge seriously and in just a couple of decades made impressive achievements, ranging from acing Mars orbit insertion and landing + roving at first trial, or Moon sample return (more below). What also changed that — but this might change by the month as of mid 2025 — is that public funding seems to be crumbling on the US side, Commercial planetary exploration has yet to deliver (and anyway, someone has to pay), for planetary exploration (e.g., Witze, 2025). For LEO human/telecommunication it did, already.

And in fact, at the same time while Mars sample return is being cancelled. Another thing that just a decade before seemed just a bit far in the future. It was funny how back then (see McLennan et al., 2012) there seemed to be a path ahead, at some point necessarily being robotic-human, but in some indefinite time to come. The future is often indefinite, until it happens.

Even the cold war seen after the end of it might seem not so maleficient. After all the Brown-Vernadksy Symposiums were some sort of glasnost ante litteram, i.e., still back in the early 1970s ². Soviet Venus exploration was quite successful, and lots of cooperation rose across US Ivy League and major Russian institutes, and European too (e.g., see baloon exploration of Venus in the 1980s, e.g., Sagdeev et al., 1986).

Upstream, downstream Link to heading

There are essentially two types of planetary science (meteoritics, et al., are somewhat independent, but closely linked), borrowing oil & gas terminology:

• Upstream: Linked to experiment building and data generation (and analysis, of course, but in a closed club, with initial embargoes)
• Downstream: Observational and sometimes modelling, using data acquired by others (astronomers treat stuff more like observatories, planetary science is often into the so-called “PI”-mode for experiments)

The impact of it is different. I discussed it a bit a couple of years ago in a talk³. In fact I have been thinking years ago⁴

Instrument building, which drives the “upstream” planetary science was always restricted to those institutes able to build hardware, alone, or with industry. Data analysis (and modelling), the “downstream” planetary science practice was more widely distributed. This is the stuff I have been mostly doing and promoting, in fact. Of course when upstream planetary scientist do not design, build, or test, they can very well do downstream things (like major planetary research centres do).

I entered the business at the very end of the 1990s. And thinking that in fact I sensed back in the 90s that the way to go was Earth Observation. But so is the path of life… I ended up doing mainly planetary stuff for a couple of decades, at least. My grandma paid my first conference⁵, and back then I used to perform very rudimentary data processing (you can find a brief account of that⁶).

So how did I enter this? After all I came from a small provincial university, but my back-then advisor had some contacts, most probably for some sabbaticals (yes, some even had/have such kind of welfare… ) in US, so in fact he brought that back and filled a niche, at least for several years.

I have been a “donwstream” person, so mostly doing observational science with mission data. So, I am grateful to those actually building the experiments, running them, and collecting, producing, calibrating, archiving data. It is in fact quite a lot. One has to say that without upstream, there is no downstream.

I got to know within less than a decade or so during/after PhD more or less all the early folks who were there from the start, like Jim Head (Brown), Ron Greeley (ASU), Mike Carr (USGS), Vic Baker (UoA), Sasha Basilevsky (Vernadsky), Gerhard Neukum (DLR, then FU) and the generation after that, so to say. and then I met who was there when the thing was about to start (together with Jim, in fact, who was also training Apollo astronauts), e.g., Johanness Geiss (Uni Bern, later ISSI), who was from an even earlier generation of space scientists.

A mission every 2 years… Link to heading

…Or so it seemed.

My reference point of what planetary science is was mostly the early-mid 2000s. Back then I though it was normal, after all, to have a some sort of planetary mission every two years, developed on either side of the Atlantic⁷.

I had a slight observational bias, though. I put my feet at ESA in early 2005 and Cassini/Huygens (Saturn system) was just getting started after a long cruise, Mars Expresss (MEX) too, arriving more or less together with the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Also, with lots of commonalities with MEX, Venus Express was about to go, too. So it was quite packed.

That was clearly a lucky bunch of decades, with a beginning (essentially the Apollo missions, that kick-started anyway LPI and LPSC, i.e., “the” conference), and no end in sight. Now the end is a bit more in sight, though.

Chili cook-off Link to heading

A couple of years back in time:

What was to me surprising was how accessible the community was, and how informal, after all. Some components of LPSC for example, were very rustic, and heritage of a cozy, familiar atmosphere that had necessarily to change with growth (inversely to my interest in attending): The chili cookoff was quite alien to me as an Italian, but was a friendly chili-cooking competition from different universities, in some odd rodeo place in the middle of nowhere with some terrible food (produced chili was anyway not enough) and greasy, sticky plastic-covered long tables in a huge farm festival hall. Sadly, that soon afterwards was cancelled and it became a “gala dinner”, in which obviously I never even considered participating. Then Clear Lake (the neighborhoood of Houston close to NASA JSC, and LPI) was abandoned for some place in the north, and that (for me) was a bit it.

LPSC was truly something special back than and - I can well believe - even more in the earlier days as JSC, that i never saw. I was an outsider (I am still one, in many respects), so I could not really appreciate the customary nature of certain traditions, such as the “University of Hawaii party”, or the “University of Arizona party”. But it all seeemed all not exclusive as one could imagine. Now I understand, why, at least to some extent: Early 2000s were having still a large “downstream” component to it. Not totally, as Magellan Venus was still “fresh”, and MGS was still a bit in the monolithic Malin-JGR-super-long-paper-with-all-stuff-in phase, e.g., Malin and Edgett, 2001).

But - again this is nice of planetary science - beyond embargo periods of a few months, and in some cases temporarily secret sauces for data reduction, data were/are (will be?) available freely to non team members, like yours truly, among other fellows from the fringes of the empire. This actually changed a bit with time (for the better). Certain experiment teams have been extremely open⁸ with data, such as NASA MRO Hirise, CRISM, or ESA Mars Express HRSC, LRO LROC (and many more), even beyond obligations.

When upstream dominates (i.e., new missions, PI on the spotlight, vanity journals publishing their results, and let the rest eat croissants), so does competition. When downstream dominates, i.e., when not so many missions produce fresh data, but there is time to actually analyse calmly, more cooperation kicks in. I don’t think this captures the entire dynamics, but a bit of it. Data analysis in times of low input-rate for new data does improve (after all the most refined post-Viking Orbiter science was in the 90s, e.g. see also Kieffer, et al, 1992).

On top of course comes the publish-or-perish, publish-on-high-impact-factor-journals, show-off, “Io so io e vvoi nun siete…”⁹ dynamics³.

After NASA Apollo, there was a large break where activity was sample-related. After NASA Viking too, but then it was mostly data-driven. The gap in missions¹⁰ meant more time for analysing data. Thus scholarly articles, books after Viking were based on a good distillation of available data. Such data did not grow every quarter. But with a wide range of missions from the mid 2000s onwards, early on orbiter, then lander, data did actually grow - and grows - by quarter a lot (see e.g. something on this).

I can’t reveal the name, but when - back in 2002 - a very prominent planetary scientist, one of those guys who ask nasty questions at your first talk, was walking few meters in front of me while I was going to hang my poster in the sweaty plastic-covered hall, what in normal days was some sort of sport facility (so the smell of poster session was fitting), he farted. So loudly in the warm late afternoon of Houston, that I had to stop not to burst into laugh (with the additional reason not to walk straight into the plume, hoping that the almost non-existent wind could disperse it somehow).

Even few years later, I recall also when the LPSC program itself was being put together and one or two days before the http directory was available and not hidden, so one could sneak peek into the program. Sadly, now one has to check what they deleted inside existing (and past!) programs, in fear of consequences¹¹…

Red paint for a red planet Link to heading

There are always stories, and always stories forgotten. This I heard (so please consider it semi-fictional), and have some piece of evidence for it¹² (Figure 1), but believe me, the core of it is true ¹³.

As the legend goes: There was apparently some guy at ESA HQ in Paris (ESA is an international organisation, with diplomatic-like benefits, so you don’t expect them to drive the very same scratched car I might drive, or the mad-max neolithically repaired cargo bike that I ride) who owned a Ferrari. It seemed to make perfect sense, and a great match for corporate communication purposes and own inclination to try and maximise the exposure of the first Mars mission of ESA, Mars Express (MEX, which I actually helped a bit with, during its first year of operation, so I have some affection to it) with something linking the famous sport scar brand to Mars. So they came up with a little bit of Ferrari Red paint bolted onto the bus (i.e., the main square-ish body) of MEX. It turned out that in the end Ferrari did not really care too much, even. Understandably the overlap betwen their customers and space science enthusiasts or professionals has to be quite small.

Figure 1: Reminiscent of tissotropic holy blood from southern Italy, it is a copy of the Red Ferrari paint ampoule that is orbiting since twenty years Mars. Perhaps there the pigment is still looking good, yet going through freeze-thaw cycles… Maybe while qualifiying it¹⁴, they did model that, too. It is a pity it’s not published.

Yes, those years were glamorous. Also, thankfully an analogue of DOGE did not exist when this was conceived, and implemented.

What’s ahead? Link to heading

I am no aruspice, and I have no ungulate internal organs to sample, but … tibi Naevole, some possible scenarios can be outlined:

1. Things go back close to where they were (very unlikely in my view), i.e., US leads, Europe does OK-ish, in parallel with China pushing a lot (a kind of cold war 2.0 in planetary science terms, so possibly also with positive outcome, don’t know… like with a CAS-Brown Microsymposium to be?)
2. China fills the gap that US left (unlikely in my view, but they will achieve almost certainly a lot)
3. Europe takes the lead (very unlikely in my view, but some good robotic science exploration will be there)

So, while flourishing during the first Cold War, the discipline might be regionally going (a bit) south with a second one starting/ongoing. Still, India, Japan, et al. are hopefully independent from this, and will also still be active in planeary scientific exploration.

In China I bet it will be like it used to be in the past 50 years in the West. In Europe - I might be biased as I did serve Europlanet, and co-founded the downstream-first OpenPlanetary - as long as it is downstream it’s cheap-ish. And there are at least a couple of major missions on their way (Bepi Colombo, Juice) that will grant the upstream institutions and groups some oxygen for few years. How was the trajectory since the 2001 Bonnet view? More ambitious than funded. After all, if you look at Exomars rover, for decades it was just having enough money stay afloat… even my far memories of the mid 2000s were kind of “it’s going to be delayed another X years”. One has also to say that upstream robotic does not have to be super expensive (MEX was like in total 150M, if I am not mistaken¹⁵ which is a bargain compared to other missions. There were some reasons for it, not necessarily all repeateable , (e.g., see Ferri and Denis, 2003, Martin et al., 2025). But ambitious robotic exploration is. Particularky challenging when James Webb had been very hungry¹⁶. Yes, Mars Sample Return appetite was/is not too far off.

Whatever happens, planetary science is not indispensable. Nor its community, as sad as it can sound from someone who actually liked the discipline, and most of its people. That does not mean it is not valuable in many ways. Just, if descoping occurrs - and that seems to happen now in some parts of the World - priorities are others.

Earth Observation is (nowadays, and ESA demonstrated it quite well, I’d say), on the other hand, prominent. Even if some countries trash it for few years (at least from the environmentl monitoring point of view…).

My guess is that planetary science research will survive (in US) as:

• Some small Ivy League (or alike) protected species faculty reserve
• Elsewhere as hobby with people doing other things as main activity (research-wise), e.g., chair in Petrology with research interest in planetary counterparts, but really not funded…
• Applied, in some commercial space tech bro outlet (there are currently not that many, we will see how that will play out… )

In fact, some space-faring billionaires were “collecting”, like a patio party Maecenas, promintent scientists, and personalities. I recall a 2019 Twitter hashtag of some Bezos-organised party with fancy guests, and those tech/science patron vibes. Oh, it even has a website: https://marsconference.com. The page is very eloquent:

This invite-only conference embraces an optimistic vision for scientific discovery to advance a golden age of innovation. MARS attendees participate in hands-on learning, demos of emerging technology, and experiences where discovery leads to friendship.

I also don’t think that all those billionaires actually respect necessarily science. Again, 1950-1960s was about who’s first, not science-first. It fortunately occurred that science benefited quite a lot. It was planned yes, but also lucky. It could have been different. Nevertheless, I am sure locally (temporally or spatially speaking) good things will happen, for science, and for tax payers. But we were all living - in the West, I mean - in a climate optimum (in geopolitical sense. Well, not only geopolitical, in fact…).

I could be more positive, yes. And I hope the above scenarios turn out to be wrong, all will be happy, peaceful, well-funded for both pure and applied science, and with climate mitigation and adaptation under control. And soon nuclear fusion. And a beer, and a hug.

Planetary… protection Link to heading

That’s what is going to go first, I bet, if (ever) commercial actors take over. Existing treatises are anyway not so stringent, so it’s all about capability and will of one country to perform - say - Mars sample return, or send people who poop on Mars, and planetary protection will be - who knows - a bit like Seneca’s fear. But not quite like Montaigne’s misfortunes. There is a lot of literature, that I bet, if things ever go that far, will be plain ignored¹⁷.

Finally, I find it quite amazing how much some other space-faring billionaires, while we are trashing our own planet, are obsessed to dumping also another one over/at the edge of the habitable zone.

Ah yes, since I am here, and you might ask; If it ever goes that far with human exploraiton, I’d be for an Antarctica-like Mars exploration: Only scientific, peaceful, and without trashing the planet. So, most probably an unpopular position. Yes, terraforming might start to be fashion, research-wise, as the demise of planetary science public funding calls for the next big thing, for those surviving it. Eight years ago, repositioning towards “the Moon” vs. “other Planetary Science” might have seemed safe. This time it will be tougher.

As for resource exploitation, asteroid mining, in-space economy, in-orbit AI data centers, and all the rest, what Phil Metzger¹⁸ writes is always very insightful. Just, a little too optimistic, perhaps.

Oh yes, Planetary… Defense Link to heading

Which does not sound — for those not in the business — so much different from the above, but apart from the obvious (planetary defense is mostly related to threats and risk from extraterrestrial impacts), there is also another level of perception around it, most probably: If we litter Mars with bugs nobody cares, if a km-sized asteroid risks hitting us, it’s another level of scare, and — to be fair — effect.

It is not only about collective imagination, supported by a few decades of periodic disaster movies (more popular than stuff resembling the colour out of space, or alike). The “defense” (in more mundane sense) dimension of this is clearly different (technology, assets, platforms, and so on). So my bet is that planetary defense will have a rosier future.

I write all this now, because, like poetry might come out to capture a thought, a moment, a feeling, prose takes a bit longer, but still fulfills the need of capturing something. In my case, capturing, and just very mildly processing, the recent past and the present in my professional neighbourhood. I did not mix anecdotes and summaries to raise any attention. I simply think it had to be written somewhere, as personal accounts are still recording - albeit filtered by perception - reality. And reality changes, just like said before here (bottom of post), so that sometimes we don’t recognise it anymore. For example, the Outpost is long gone¹⁹.

In this respect, I am grateful for what once was, and passed. I am grateful for those met on the journey, who were, and passed.

CFA, at last? Link to heading

Yes, planetary science as such is a peacetime luxury, like most things we assume as granted - and they should. It just happens that it depends on political support. And that if those in power deem something not important enough, industry will anyway build soemthing, just not for planets…

So, how does a discipline survive? Underground, as sub-areated ashes? As a useful fire in the private sector?

I think where planetary (geo)science excels is its vantage point: The spatial and temporal multi-scale of it. Yes, it is shared very much by Geology, which came first, in fact. I recall the headline of a former colleague who later became a veterinarian (!), that still reads once a planetary scientist, always a planetary scientist, It would be a tiny bit to “keep (that part of) the light of consciousness alive”…

Acknowledgements Link to heading

I did formulate in concise form some seeds of this already in the recent past²⁰. And bits and pieces discussing with colleagues, friends. This is the first time I collect under a roughly integrated narrative those thoughts, and memories. I am grateful for comments fom ARM, SVG.

References / notes Link to heading