Backers of six proposed European space-science projects, three featuring partnerships with Japan and one with NASA, made their case Dec. 1 under the watchful eye of European Space Agency (ESA) officials who said they cannot afford a repeat of the mismanagement that occurred in the BepiColombo mission to Mercury.rnBepiColombo was given final approval in mid-November by the Science Program Committee (SPC), which sets Europe's space-science agenda within ESA's budget guidelines. The mission, planned for launch in July 2014, was authorized despite the fact that its cost to ESA, now estimated at 970 million euros ($1.45 billion), is 50 percent above what the SPC thought it was buying when it first approved BepiColombo.
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