SAN FRANCISCO – As a group, NASA’s low-cost science missions have improved significantly. “There were lessons learned over the years that helped,” said Charles Norton, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory deputy chief technologist. “In the beginning there were a lot of failures. The community bootstrapped itself to become successful.” In fact, low-cost, risk-tolerant Class-D small satellite missions, which cost no more than $150 million, “have done transformative science,” said Florence Tan, NASA Science Mission Directorate deputy chief technologist. TEMPEST-D and RAINCube, for example, cubesats ejected from the International Space Station minutes…
