Wow, what a week! If you like human spaceflight, international cooperation, and Mars science (and who doesn’t?!), this has been your week! Shuttle Discovery just launched this afternoon headed to the International Space Station (ISS), and the Phoenix Mars Lander hit the bullseye in the Martian arctic last Sunday! This is “ebullience”!

The Pressurized Japanese Module or “Kibo” (hope) — largest of 4 ISS modules — will be delivered on this mission. It features microgravity, life science, and astrophysics payloads and proves again that Japan is at the forefront of space technology.

Phoenix is the first Mars mission run by a public university: the University of Arizona in Tucson. Headed by Peter Smith of its Lunar & Planetary Laboratory (where I got my PhD by the way; pardon my pride in the U of A!), it’s goal is to be the first mission to actually “touch” water on the Mars surface and see if anything (or maybe anyone?!) could live there — past, present, or future. Their international partners include the Max Planck Institute (Germany), University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and the Canada Meteorological Station (Canada’s first foray to Mars).

As we approach the 2015 Maslow Window, another golden age in space is looming, but it was not always so. For example, despite the big ticket Magellan (Venus orbiter) and Galileo (Jupiter) programs, the 1980s featured what Jeff Foust of The Space Review calls a “disastrous drought” of missions. With former NASA Administrator Dan Golden’s unfortunate “faster, better, cheaper” planetary mission mantra, this frustrating pattern continued into the late 1990s.

Partly in response to spectacular Mars mission failures in 1999, NASA changed course and is now pursuing more ambitious and pricier planetary programs. Highlights include New Horizons, enroute to the first Pluto flyby in 2015, the $ 700 M Juno Jupiter polar orbiter arriving 2016, and a two-year extension (announced last month) to the spectacular Cassini mission still at Saturn! The timing and character of this multi-decadal planetary slump and recent recovery is totally consistent with expectations here at 21stCenturyWaves.com (See The Forecasts).

However, we’re not quite there yet. The long-awaited Europa Orbiter (to search for Europa’s subsurface oceans and possible sea monsters!) was canceled, and its space nuclear power and propulsion program (Prometheus) died from cost, technology, and political injuries. It appears we’ll have to be closer to the 2015 Maslow Window before they’ll gain ebullient acceptance.

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