{"id":18689,"date":"2017-12-21T01:10:55","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T17:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-picks-a-drone-for-titan-and-a-return-to-a-comet-as-prospects-for-future-probes\/"},"modified":"2017-12-21T01:10:55","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T17:10:55","slug":"nasa-picks-a-drone-for-titan-and-a-return-to-a-comet-as-prospects-for-future-probes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-picks-a-drone-for-titan-and-a-return-to-a-comet-as-prospects-for-future-probes\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA picks a drone for Titan and a return to a comet as prospects for future probes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dragonfly
An artist\u2019s conception shows the sequence leading to the landing of the Dragonfly probe and the deployment of its rotorcraft on Titan. (NASA Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A rotorcraft that could flit around the Saturnian moon Titan and a probe that could bring a sample back from an already-famous comet have emerged as top prospects for a future NASA mission.<\/p>\n

Those two mission concepts were selected for further study from a list of 12 proposals that were submitted for NASA\u2019s New Frontiers portfolio, aimed at space missions with a development cost cap of about $850 million.<\/p>\n

Examples of existing New Frontiers projects include the Juno orbiter circling Jupiter, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft that\u2019s on its way to sample a near-Earth asteroid, and the New Horizons probe that flew past Pluto and is now heading toward another icy object on the edge of the solar system.<\/p>\n

A showdown is expected to result in one of the two new mission concepts moving onward to its development phase in 2019, NASA said today.<\/p>\n

Both concepts call for robotic probes to be launched in the 2020s and yield results in the 2030s.<\/p>\n

Flying around Titan<\/h4>\n

The Dragonfly mission would launch a drone-type rotorcraft toward smog-covered Titan in 2025, with arrival set for 2034. Its multi-year mission would follow up on findings from the Huygens lander, which sent back a brief burst of data from Titan\u2019s icy surface in 2005.<\/p>\n

Readings from Huygens and its mothership, the Cassini orbiter, have shown that Titan has seas, lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane. Titan\u2019s environment may seem unworldly in comparison with Earth, but astrobiologists say it could conceivably support weird kinds of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will land on the surface of Titan, perform detailed compositional measurements and study Titan\u2019s habitability,\u201d Elizabeth Turtle, the planetary scientist from Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Applied Physics Laboratory who\u2019s leading the Dragonfly team, told reporters during a teleconference. \u201cIn this way, we can evaluate how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed in an environment that we know has the ingredients for life \u2014 for water-based life, or potentially even hydrocarbon-based life.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said Dragonfly\u2019s instrument-laden drone would spend most of its time on the ground, but it\u2019d be able to fly through Titan\u2019s dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere and survey other sites dozens of miles away.<\/p>\n

\"CAESAR
An artist\u2019s conception shows the CAESAR probe collecting a sample from the surface of Comet 67\/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. (NASA Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sampling a comet<\/h4>\n

The other mission selected for further study is known as Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, or CAESAR. It\u2019s designed to return to Comet 67P\/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the duck-shaped chunk of ice that was studied up close by the European Space Agency\u2019s Rosetta probe in 2014-2016.<\/p>\n

CAESAR\u2019s team leader, Cornell University planetary scientist Steve Squyres, said there\u2019s an advantage in returning to a previously mapped comet. \u201cBy going to that comet, there\u2019s an enormous amount of risk reduction that takes place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The mission would also make use of technologies that were put to the test by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency for Hayabusa, its sample return mission to an asteroid.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the CAESAR mission will do is return the first samples from the surface of a comet nucleus,\u201d Squyres said. (An earlier NASA mission, Stardust, brought back flecks of dust from the coma surrounding Comet Wild 2 in 2006).<\/p>\n

CAESAR would collect at least 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of cometary material and bring it back to Earth in 2038.<\/p>\n

Squyres noted that past studies have confirmed comets contain water as well as organic compounds that could serve as life\u2019s building blocks. CAESAR\u2019s sample material would be distributed to researchers worldwide to \u201cproduce groundbreaking science for decades to come,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA\u2019s associate administrator for science, said in a news release that the two missions are \u201ctantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a giant leap forward in developing our next bold mission of science discovery,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Enceladus and Venus<\/h4>\n

In addition to Dragonfly and CAESAR, NASA said two other concepts would receive technology development funds to prepare them for future mission competitions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Enceladus Life Signatures and Habitability:<\/strong> The ELSAH team will receive support to develop cost-effective techniques that limit spacecraft contamination and enable life detection measurements.<\/li>\n
  • Venus In Situ Composition Investigations:<\/strong> The VICI team will conduct further development on the Venus Element and Mineralogy Camera to operate under Venus\u2019 harsh conditions. The instrument would use lasers to measure the composition of rocks on the Venusian surface.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    An artist\u2019s conception shows the sequence leading to the landing of the Dragonfly probe and the deployment of its rotorcraft on Titan. (NASA Illustration) A rotorcraft that could flit around the Saturnian moon Titan and a probe that could bring a sample back from an already-famous comet have emerged as top prospects for a future […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3096,2423,1404,190,2396],"class_list":["post-18689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-caesar","tag-comets","tag-dragonfly","tag-nasa","tag-titan"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}