NASA Planetary Missions: Investigations For Five Future Plans Selected

The mission would discover about 10 times more near-Earth objects than have been found to date, NASA officials said.

NASA announced Wednesday the next space exploration missions scheduled to launch sometime between 2020 and 2021.

According to a NASA statement, over the next year, scientists and administrators will assess five investigation concepts-two of the missions would send a probe to Venus, while three of the potential missions would study either single or multiple asteroids.

A third project involving PSI researchers would explore the origin of planetary cores by studying the metallic asteroid Psyche.

NASA’s Discovery Program requested proposals for spaceflight investigations in November 2014.

DAVINCI (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging): this mission would study the chemical composition of Venus’ atmosphere during a 63-minute descent. The robotic probe would also use its imaging tools to determine if there are any active volcanoes on Venus’ surface, and how its planetary landscape interacts with its atmosphere. The submitted proposals would study Venus, near-Earth objects and a variety of asteroids. By September one year from now, maybe a five’s couple missions will be picked by the space organization for proceeded with advancement, at an expense of around $500 million, says The Verge.

This orbiter would return high-resolution topographic data and photos of the entire surface of Venus, allowing mission team members to generate maps of the planet’s deformation and surface composition.

Lucy: the mission would perform the first reconnaissance of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, objects thought to hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the Solar System. Its principal investigator is Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University. Little is known about these asteroids, which could have come from further out in the solar system. Goddard would manage the project. It’s likely the survivor of a violent hit-and-run with another object that stripped off the outer, rocky layers of a protoplanet.

Five conceivable space missions have been chosen by NASA to get preparatory subsidizing, in front of a conceivable dispatch as ahead of schedule as 2020. Amy Mainzer of JPL is the PI, and JPL would manage the mission. “Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado is the principal investigator”.

The initiative is part of NASA’s Discovery Program, founded in 1992 to sponsor solar system exploration. Scientists believe that these asteroids could help them better understand what happened in our solar system’s early days.