Vertesi, J, Bietz, M., Cohn, M., Jordan, S.B., and Reinecke, D. (2024). Social
Considerations for Successful Long-Lived Missions. Triton and Pluto: The long lost twins of
active worlds. AAS-IOP/NASA Triton Pluto.

1.1 Introduction
Forty years of Voyager, twenty years of Cassini, ten years of Curiosity, and a decade-long
cruise for New Horizons to reach its primary target. With the exception of the latter, most
space science missions were not designed with excessive longevity in mind, despite their
impressive age [23]. Spacecraft teams instead tend to improvise extensively in the moment,
rely on charismatic leaders, hope for serendipitous circumstances, and scramble for survival
amid successive financial crises. As a result, little systematic attention has been given to the
supporting infrastructures and human organizations necessary to sustain space science over
the long term, even as next generation missions contemplate very long lifetimes.
While no mission planner has a crystal ball, there are ways to plan for long-term success
that avoid reinventing the wheel. A mission to the Ice Giants, their moons, and beyond will
do well to heed the lessons learned from studies of successful long-term scientific investi-
gations in the planetary sciences and elsewhere to plan for a long-lived future. This contri-
bution reviews longevity-oriented considerations for large sociotechnical science teams that
prospective missions can build into their plans from the ground up.
This paper draws on the authors’ two decades of qualitative and historical studies among
the planetary science community, including ethnographic immersion among several mission
teams and interviews with dozens of participating scientists and engineers at multiple lev-
els of mission hierarchy. We bring into the conversation relevant literature from sociology
of science, history of technology, and computer-supported cooperative work. We draw on
our advisory capacity roles alongside scientists, engineers, and project managers developing
long-lived teams, including an Interstellar Probe and prospective missions to Europa, Io, and
Neptune. Among our co-authors are ethnographers who have been embedded in scientific
fields of collaboration at scale, including neuroscience, genetics, and oceanography. Across
these domains we have conducted semi-structured interviews with leading scientists, admin-
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2 CHAPTER 1. PLANNING FOR LONG-LIVED MISSIONS
istrators, project managers, and historians of science on the challenges of very long duration
science in order to generate insights for long-term teams.
We present findings incorporating lessons from a) past studies of spaceflight [15, 46, 50,
80, 83]; b) big science, including long-term experiments like particle accelerators or obser-
vatories [36, 45, 25]; and c) the sociological literature on team science [16] and science and
technology studies [40, 74]. Building upon this evolving body of practice, we introduce a
sociotechnical approach to thinking about spacecraft teams, their technical tools, and their
participants. We propose that long-duration science excels when mission planners consider
experimental longevity from the outset rather than after the fact. We therefore document
challenges and strategies for success concerning: a) multi-generational team structure; b)
cultures of knowledge-management; c) aging hardware, software, and datasets; d) sustain-
able funding models; and e) workforce diversity and inclusion. Our goal is to be comprehen-
sive but not exhaustive, offering a summary of and an introduction to a rich body of work in
each domain.
Our findings and recommendations build upon prior co-authored white papers, technical
reports, and proceedings in which we have advanced previous articulations of these ideas
[21, 59, 60, 70, 82]. We are grateful to our many coauthors and interlocutors in the space
sciences—especially Glen Fountain, Stamatios Krimigis, Abi Rymer, Pontus Brandt and
Kathy Mandt—for their sustained engagement with our investigations and our findings.