I’m curious what goes into operating each of the missions.
E.g Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is listed at $25M in F.Y. 2025.
I would assume most of the infrastructure is already in place (and paid for?). Is that largely staffing costs, or does is it things like cost of upkeep for antennas amortized based on mission usage?
It’s largely staffing costs, yes. It takes a team to keep a spacecraft operating, even on the far side of the solar system. Flight engineers diagnosing issues and developing workarounds to keep aging hardware going, mission planners scheduling science operations plans and figuring how to get as much science done as possible given limited data downlink and power and other constraints, orbital dynamicists keeping a mission precisely flying through a precisely-chosen path of orbital slingshots and gravity assists, data analysts making sure science data is properly calibrated, scientists planning and overseeing experiments, software engineers carefully vetting patches to flight code running on decades-old rad hard hardware, and more. And then add on all the practical matters that get lumped into “overheads”: computing, data storage, office space, facilities, admin and support staff… The details depend on which mission, of course. But across the board it’s mostly people. Highly experienced people with specialized expertise and often decades of knowledge of these missions and their operations.
