Ambitions Renewed

Abstract

In the early 1990s, NASA’s administrator Daniel Goldin implemented a policy of smaller missions dictated by the ethos “smaller, cheaper, faster, and better”. This led to significant cuts in the agency’s workforce as well as a redistribution of the internal budget, but it also increased the mission cadence, an important factor in maintaining and develo** competencies in the mission design, management, and execution of spacecraft systems such as imaging instruments. The policy helped NASA regain its crown as the lead agency in planetary exploration, with almost ten missions being launched throughout the decade, although some notable failures forced a new change of policy by the turn of the millennium. We will review here the missions that were launched within the 1990’s.