Boston University’s Center for Space Physics was forced to shed three engineering positions early in the summer after it and a partner group of other schools and companies lost an $89 million contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in late May.
The contract, which was one of the largest in BU history, was for a BU-designed project called SPIDR, which NASA Explorer Project Scientist Paul Hertz said would have detected and measured the thin, hot gas between galaxies, thought by some scientists to be the bulk of matter in the universe.
Though BU was splitting the contract money with several other schools and companies, the loss was significant enough that it forced the center to lay off the engineers who had been hired specifically for the project, Center for Space Physics Director Supriya Chakrabarti said. BU and its partners had spent 10 percent of the contract money and had completed about 25 percent of the project’s 10-year timeline, Hertz said.
Several office spaces which SPIDR scientists were using have also already been reoccupied, though Chakrabarti said there have been few other indirect consequences of the contract loss besides lowered morale.
‘It’s a setback we’re all disappointed,’ Chakrabarti said.
BU and its partners reapplied for the contract in June and NASA, which is considering 35 other proposals, will issue a decision in October, Hertz said.
Hertz said NASA terminated the contract after a group of independent scientists hired by the agency concluded that calculations made in BU’s grant proposal for SPIDR were inaccurate, though Chakrabarti contends his group’s calculations were always supposed to be considered tentative.
In the proposal, which Hertz said used a ‘clever’ but complicated technique, BU scientists calculated that their design would measure the intergalactic hot gasses to a level of specificity significantly higher than the group of independent scientists later found. SPIDR which stands for Spectroscopy and Photometry of the IGM Diffuse Radiation involves sending the instruments into a high Earth orbit.
Because the new calculations were not what BU had originally proposed to win the contract, NASA officials decided the project needed to be canceled and BU’s proposal resubmitted for consideration against other proposals.
‘As we got further into the development, it became apparent there was a mistake,’ Hertz said.
But Chakrabarti said calculation changes are not uncommon in projects like SPIDR. Because scientists get a better idea of a project’s mathematical specifics as they move to steps involving detailed design and implementation the phase into which the project had just entered Chakrabarti said projects are often altered.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Jacqueline Hewitt, the director of the school’s Center for Space Studies who was also involved in the SPIDR project, said some at NASA may have misunderstood the fact that the original calculations were not final.
‘Not everyone appreciated that, so then later some people felt the numbers were just plain wrong,’ Hewitt said. ‘There was confusion between the numbers being wrong and the numbers being uncertain.’
The contract was terminated in May to allow BU to resubmit the proposal with revised calculations for competition against other schools this year. Chakrabarti said NASA told him that BU’s new proposal, which was submitted after the deadline, will be considered fairly and he is confident BU’s design will win the contract again.
BU Provost Dennis Berkey said via e-mail that the project’s funding through a contract, rather than grant, likely made a difference in NASA officials’ decision. Grants, usually worked on by one or a small group of faculty members, allow greater flexibility than contracts, which often include a ‘high degree of specificity’ regarding how a project should be done, Berkey said.
Contracts are also often won through stiff competition, forcing contractors to hold the contracted to their proposals or open themselves up to criticism from contract losers, he said.
‘Something like this happened in SPIDR, leaving scientists and administrators of good will in disagreement over whether SPIDR would be able to proceed consistent with the original contract,’ Berkey said.
Though it is ‘definitely unusual’ for NASA to terminate a contract, it is not unheard of, Hertz said.
‘There are problems sometimes that cause NASA to rethink things,’ he said.
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