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Planetary News: Deep Impact (2006)

NASA Announces Discovery Program Selections:

New Mission to the Moon, Venus, or Asteroid, and New Life for Deep Impact and Stardust

By Emily Lakdawalla
October 31, 2006

Yesterday NASA selected three proposed mission concepts -- one each to the Moon, Venus, and an asteroid -- for further study as the next Discovery mission.  In addition, they selected three possible Missions of Opportunity to reuse the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft to explore comets and search for extrasolar planets.  "The selection represents an impressively diverse collection of bodies," said Planetary Society Director of Projects Bruce Betts.  "NASA's Discovery program provides a way for the science community to propose ideas to NASA, rather than just NASA dictating new missions.  This process tends to generate creative ideas across a broad range of science priorities."

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Yesterday NASA selected three proposed mission concepts -- one each to the Moon, Venus, and an asteroid -- for further study as the next Discovery mission.  In addition, they selected three possible Missions of Opportunity to reuse the Deep Impact and Stardust spacecraft to explore comets and search for extrasolar planets.  "The selection represents an impressively diverse collection of bodies," said Planetary Society Director of Projects Bruce Betts.  "NASA's Discovery program provides a way for the science community to propose ideas to NASA, rather than just NASA dictating new missions.  This process tends to generate creative ideas across a broad range of science priorities."

Discovery missions are selected through open competition among mission concepts proposed and led by individual scientists, called Principal Investigators. With a cap of $425 million, Discovery missions are the cheapest in NASA's stable and must be completed quickly, with less than 36 months elapsing from selection to launch.

The three Discovery missions selected for further study are:

  • OSIRIS: The Origins Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security mission would survey an asteroid and attempt to return a sample from the asteroid to Earth.  The mission is led by Michael Drake from the University of Arizona, and would be managed by Goddard Space Flight Center.
  • VESPER: The Venus Sounder for Planetary Exploration, an orbiter, would study the chemistry and dynamics of Venus' atmosphere.  The mission would also be managed by Goddard, under the leadership of Gordon Chin.
  • GRAIL: the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory mission would perform highly detailed gravity field mapping of the Moon to reveal its interior structure.  It would be led by Maria Zuber, from MIT, and would be managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Discovery mission selections are based on a combination of factors including cost, feasibility, and the robustness of the science goals that may be accomplished.  Recent Discovery missions such as MESSENGER and Dawn have run into technical and schedule problems that have caused them to go over budget or remove instruments, so these mission concept studies will be critically evaluated to make sure they can actually be built and operated within the Discovery program's $425 million cost cap.  Each of these three missions will receive $1.2 million to conduct the concept studies.

Once the concept studies are completed, NASA will most likely select one of the three missions for development, but it could also select two, or none, depending upon the available budget.  VESPER has been proposed twice before but never selected; the fact that it has been through at least part of the Discovery process may give it an advantage in the next round.  Additionally, the apparent failure of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer instrument on Venus Express makes the VESPER mission more valuable scientifically than it might otherwise have been. Sample return from an asteroid has been attempted before (by Japan's Hayabusa) but has not yet succeeded, which makes OSIRIS an attractive, but possibly more risky, choice.  While limited in scope, the GRAIL mission would provide a wholly new data set about the Moon, which might be seen to support the President's Vision for Space Exploration.

Also part of the Discovery program are the "Missions of Opportunity," in which teams may propose to perform additional research using existing spacecraft, either NASA or foreign.  This time around, NASA has selected for further study three Missions of Opportunity.  "What is really different about this selection, relative to previous selections, are the Mission of Opportunity proposals to re-use existing spacecraft that are hanging out in space following the completion of their primary comet exploring missions," says Betts.

The proposed Missions of Opportunity would re-use either the Deep Impact or Stardust spacecraft, both of which are currently "mothballed" in solar orbit:

  • DIXI: The Deep Impact Extended Investigation of Comets would take the Deep Impact spacecraft to fly by comet Boethin in December 2008.
  • EPOCh: The Extrasolar Planet Observations and Characterization mission would use Deep Impact's high-resolution camera to search for Earth-mass planets in orbit around other stars.
  • NExT: Stardust NExT would maneuver the Stardust spacecraft to fly by comet Tempel 1, the same comet into which Deep Impact blasted a crater on July 4, 2005.  Stardust would be able to capture the first images of the crater and study changes in the comet between the Deep Impact encounter and Stardust's February 14, 2011 flyby.

As with the Discovery missions, NASA may select any number of the Missions of Opportunity, from none to all three, after the concept studies are completed.  Each team will receive $250,000 to conduct concept studies, and must demonstrate their ability to complete each project at a cost of less than $35 million.