STARDUST: implementing a new manage-to-budget paradigm

Abstract

STARDUST is the Discovery Program's fourth mission, selected from a field of 28 original proposals. In the Discovery series, it follows Lunar Prospector, Mars Pathfinder and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) mission. Five years after launch in February 1999, the STARDUST flight system will collect comet samples during a 6 km/s flyby of Comet 81P/Wild 2 on New Year's Day, 2004, and return the samples to Earth in January 2006. Enroute to the comet, STARDUST will also attempt to collect samples of interstellar dust. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is providing project and mission management with Lockheed Martin Astronautics (LMA) as the industrial partner for the flight and ground systems. LMA is making use of developments in the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) and the Mars Surveyor '98 projects preceding STARDUST. Under the stringent cost-caps of the Discovery Program, efficient management techniques are mandatory to control costs at acceptable risk levels. This paper provides details and example metrics characterizing the aggressive application of the design-to-cost paradigm and innovative implementation by the STARDUST management team to achieve success under the Discovery Program budget constraints.