Enlarge / An artist’s conception of a mission to return a sample from the South Pole of the Moon. (credit: NASA)
NASA has formally asked planetary scientists to submit proposals for the next New Frontiers mission, a program that will provide approximately $1 billion for a spacecraft and science program to answer a fundamental question about the Solar System.
The “announcement of opportunity” posted on a government procurement site seeks proposals for six different mission concepts desired by the planetary science community. They are ambitious, ranging from bringing samples back from a comet or the Moon’s south pole to visiting ocean worlds and a Venus lander that would perform a suite of experiments on that mysterious world’s surface:
• Comet Surface Sample Return
• Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return
• Ocean Worlds (Titan and/or Enceladus)
• Saturn Probe
• Trojan Tour and Rendezvous
• Venus In Situ Explorer
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Source: Ars Technica – Venus? Comet sample? Titan? Asteroids? NASA must choose only one