The head of NASA’s delayed Venus mission has warned that the project risks losing critical expertise if the agency can’t find a way to advance the mission further. NASA has selected the 2021 Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy, or VERITAS, mission as one of two Discovery-class missions to Venus scheduled to launch in the late 2020s. VERITAS will orbit Mars and study the planet with a variety of instruments, including Synthesized Aperture Radar (SAR).

But a year ago, the agency decided to delay the mission by three years, until 2031 at the latest, citing the results of a delay review of another NASA mission, Psyche, that revealed institutional problems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA said the delay would eliminate a “manpower imbalance” at JPL, VERITAS’ main facility, and free up the funding needed to delay Psyche.

At a meeting of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) last week, VERITAS’ principal investigator claimed that most of the issues causing the delay had been resolved. “These problems are essentially behind us,” said JPL’s Sue Smrekar, referring to the launch of Psyche in October and progress on two other major JPL-led missions, the Europa Clipper and the NISAR Earth science spacecraft (both planned for 2024).

He said the long delay, as previously planned by NASA, endangered available staffing for VERITAS, particularly for the SAR instrument under development at JPL. “There is not enough radar work at JPL. “The radar workforce is really at risk,” he said. “This is a really big technical threat to us.”

While NASA provided some funding to VERITAS to support the science team, it stated that there was “zero engineering support” for the mission. This forced some of the engineers assigned to the task to seek other jobs at JPL.

“We lose key members of the team all the time,” he said. “Over the decade it took us to be elected, we built an experienced, knowledgeable team, and they need to move on to other work.”

The mission is exploring VERITAS launches in 2031 and 2032 at NASA’s request, but Smrekar said an earlier option, such as a launch in November 2029, is still possible. An earlier launch would not only solve manpower issues but also avoid conflict with two other Venus missions – NASA’s DAVINCI and ESA’s EnVision, which will arrive at Venus in the early 2030s.

“We can still take advantage of this opportunity if we start moving next year,” he said of the November 2029 window.

The biggest challenge to this is current funding, which is stretched both by general budget pressures on the agency and the rising costs of missions such as the Mars Sample Return. “It’s absolutely true that the budget was chaos, a disaster,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t funding.”

A draft report accompanying the House version of the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bill released last week by the House Appropriations Committee supports VERITAS. “The committee recommends that NASA request sufficient funding to sustain the launch through the end of the decade,” VERITAS said in a statement, directing NASA to submit a budget profile “so the mission can stay on track.”

“Our risk increases the longer we delay and the longer we cannot find financing,” Smrekar said at the VEXAG meeting.