Enlarge / NASA has selected two new missions to explore asteroids, including the Trojan asteroids in Jupiter’s orbit depicted in this artist’s concept (not at all to scale). (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Unfortunately, there were also three losers. Two of the three losers were missions to study the atmosphere and surface of Venus, a planet not visited by NASA in more than two decades. A third project to build an instrument that would identify asteroids that might one day strike Earth, NEOCAM, will receive funding to essentially keep the project on life support for future consideration.

In a video announcing the winning missions, NASA’s chief planetary scientist, Jim Green, said the agency opted to study relics of the early Solar System. “These missions will help us learn about the infancy of our Solar System, a period just 10 million years after the birth of our Sun,” he said. The decisions were based on the value of the science, the mission’s cost, and overall risks, he said later, during a news conference.