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dragonfly

NASA solicited proposals for new robotic missions equally part of its New Frontiers exploration program, and it got a dozen of them this past Apr. Now, the agency has whittled the list down to ii contenders. One mission seeks to explore the second largest moon in the solar system, and the other would grab a slice of a comet and render information technology to Globe.

New Frontiers is NASA's electric current robotic exploration program, emphasizing new types of exploration and new locations in the solar system. There are already 3 missions in the New Frontiers programme, and you're probably familiar with them. There's New Horizons, which successfully visited Pluto and is now on class to another Kuiper Belt object. Then there's the Juno probe, which is currently orbiting Jupiter. Finally, in that location's the recently launched OSIRIS-REx mission, on route to the asteroid Bennu to collect a sample and return it to Earth. The two finalist projects have been granted funding to go along development, and i of them will become the next New Frontiers mission with a launch date around 2025.

The Dragonfly mission seeks to study Saturn'due south moon Titan like never before. Information technology would transport an eight-rotor flying robot (to a higher place) to the moon in order to sample its complex chemistry and accept a look at those hydrocarbon lakes. Titan was mapped past the Cassini probe, and the Huygens lander reached the surface. However, to truly understand Titan, we need to be mobile. Since Titan is the simply trunk in the solar system other than Earth with a thick atmosphere, a flying robot is ideal.

Assuming the Dragonfly is selected as the next New Frontiers mission to launch in 2025, information technology would get to Titan around 2034. Designers program to utilise a nuclear generator like the ane that powers the Curiosity rover, and then it could buzz around on Titan for several years earlier failing. The mission is led past APL in partnership with Penn State University.

The other possible New Frontiers mission is similar to OSIRIS-King. The Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return (CAESAR) would ready out for a comet and render a sample of its surface to Earth for study. The designers of CAESAR are targeting the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was previously visited past the ESA's Rosetta mission.

The probe would use a similar drove arm mechanism to the one on OSIRIS-King to collect pieces of the comet, storing them in insulated compartments that will protect them from the heat of reentry. After launching in 2025, CAESAR would arrive back home in 2038 with both volatile and nonvolatile samples from the comet. This mission would be built by Orbital ATK.

NASA will decide which of these two missions becomes the next New Frontiers initiative in 2022.