NASA will announce the finalist concepts for its future solar system mission during a media teleconference on Wednesday, December 20, 2017. According to the space agency, this robotic mission is targeted to be launched in mid-2020s and aims to explore the solar system.
This mission would be the fourth in NASA’s New Frontiers portfolio. So far, NASA has launched three New Frontiers missions: (1) New Horizons to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, (2) Juno at Jupiter, and (3) the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, currently travelling to the asteroid Bennu and scheduled to arrive at the asteroid in 2018.
The New Frontiers Program—managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Planetary Science Division—conducts principal investigator (PI)-led space science investigations in Science Mission Directorate’s (SMD) planetary program under a development cost cap of approximately $1 billion.
In 2014, SMD created the Planetary Missions Program Office to merge management of different missions in the Discovery, New Frontiers and Solar System Exploration Programs into a single management structure.
In May this year, NASA revealed that it had received 12 proposals for future unmanned solar system mission and was reviewing these proposals. In the past 7 months, proposals were reviewed in detail. Investigations were limited to six mission themes – (1) comet surface sample return, (2) lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin sample return, (3) ocean worlds (Titan and/or Enceladus), (4) Saturn probe, (5) Trojan tour and rendezvous, and (6) Venus in Situ explorer.
“New Frontiers is about answering the biggest questions in our solar system today, building on previous missions to continue to push the frontiers of exploration,” Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said at that time.
“We’re looking forward to reviewing these exciting investigations and moving forward with our next bold mission of discovery.”
The teleconference on Wednesday will be streamed live on NASA’s website. Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, will participate in teleconferencing. Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington and Curt Niebur, New Frontiers program scientist at NASA Headquarters will also attend the event.
NASA would select one or more concepts for Phase A study, and after the conclusion of this phase, one final investigation will enter the subsequent mission phases.
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