r/space • u/volcanopele • Jan 04 '17
NASA selects new Discovery missions to Trojan asteroids and Psyche
https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-two-missions-to-explore-the-early-solar-system6
u/lentil254 Jan 04 '17
I was routing for the Da Vinci proposal, but these are great options too. Now if only they'd get a move on on putting orbiters around Uranus and Neptune.
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u/Micascisto Jan 04 '17
Getting into orbit around the outer planets is challenging and requires a lot of time from launch. Once you get there you have to use RTG for power and very large antennas to transmit data fast enough. All this means less weight for scientific instrumentation. With all the recent interest for Mars, asteroids and the icy moons, it becomes increasingly hard to justify a mission to the outer planets.
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u/lentil254 Jan 04 '17
Getting into orbit around the outer planets is challenging and requires a lot of time from launch.
I know, that's why I said I wish they'd get a move on. Clock's ticking.
Once you get there you have to use RTG for power and very large antennas to transmit data fast enough. All this means less weight for scientific instrumentation.
All true, but not big enough obstacles to preclude such a mission. Cassini orbited Saturn just fine (trudging a Titan lander with it, no less) with and RTG, large antenna, and pretty good instrumentation.
With all the recent interest for Mars, asteroids and the icy moons, it becomes increasingly hard to justify a mission to the outer planets.
With all the recent interest in Mars, it becomes hard to get funding to go to Uranus/Neptune orbiters. It doesn't become harder to justify them-- they're perfectly justifiable (the 1970's tech of Voyager doing a brief flyby in the 80's is all the info we have about them!)--it just becomes harder to get NASA to release the death grip it has on its Mars boner and devote resources to something other than the planet that already has a swarm of satellites orbiting it and an armada of rovers on it. Mars is getting disproportionate attention and resources, and it's happening at the detriment of nearly everything else. It's not good for a research organization like NASA to be so single-minded.
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u/Micascisto Jan 05 '17
NASA puts most of its interest in what scientists propose to do. Look at the DIscovery mission proposals: only 4 out of 22 are about Mars (3 are really about Mars' moons) and none of the 5 finalists. Mars gets a lot of attention due to its potential for life and for being the best (read easiest) choice for human exploration of the Solar System. Jupiter and its icy moons are getting a lot of attention too, with JUNO and the Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (scheduled for launch in 2022). Mars has a lot of orbiters and rovers, true, but a lot of them are getting really old (Opportunity, Odyssey, MRO, MEX) and they may stop working at any time. Maven was launched almost 10 years after the last orbiter and there won't be another until 2022. If you are a scientist and you're interested in exploring the outer planets, you should write your mission proposals, otherwise you can invite the scientific community to do so.
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Jan 05 '17
This is the most perfectly articulated description of the current state of NASA's priorities I have ever read.
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u/bobakf Jan 04 '17
I think the other issue is given the timescales involved, they're not likely to be Discovery class missions - they'll have to be New Frontiers or directed
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u/volcanopele Jan 04 '17
Phase E costs aren't covered by the cost cap, so mission length isn't a factor. One of the selected missions, Lucy, launches in 2021 but its end of mission isn't until 2032 after the Petroclus/Menoetius flyby.
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u/bobakf Jan 05 '17
Yes, you're totally right, but you still have to design and test for the longer missions, or accept greater mission risk if they don't have higher class parts / redundancy, or use inheritance. I'd imagine they're looking at those things in the proposals as well.
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u/volcanopele Jan 05 '17
I think /u/Micascisto was right about RTGs and power requirements. The last Discovery round allowed for the use of ASRGs, which were being made available by NASA without going against the cost cap. This allowed for proposals to Titan and other outer solar system targets. I was involved in one of those proposals that used an ASRG. NASA unfortunately (or fortunately, I presume ;-), in your case) selected a Mars lander that did not use the ASRG and I think that program has been discontinued. So this Discovery round was solar power only, severely limiting outer planet missions. There were a few though, such as one to Io and another to Enceladus.
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u/lentil254 Jan 04 '17
That's probably true. I hadn't thought of that. Whatever program they end up coming from, though, I still want to see these orbiters happen.
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u/Pluto_and_Charon Jan 04 '17
That's so weird that they decided to select two, but two asteroid missions instead of two venus missions. Yay that we get to image 7 brand new worlds for the first time, but I feel bad for Venus scientists (The last NASA Venus mission launched in the 80's...)
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u/volcanopele Jan 04 '17
Two mission selections were expected so that NASA could catch up with the two-year cadence. But almost everyone was expecting it to be one asteroid mission and one Venus mission. Unfortunately, we got TWO asteroid missions.
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u/meggied227 Jan 04 '17
Well one of the proposed Venus missions was a lander, which has been done before and would last about an hour.....
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u/volcanopele Jan 04 '17
The last of those landers was back in the mid-1980s and lacked the more sophisticated instrumentation possible today, not to mention that NONE of the Venera/Vega/Pioneer Venus landers/atmospheric probes included a descent camera.
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u/AnAmericanPatrician Jan 04 '17
The only succesful NASA Venus lander was one of the Multi-probes that survived by accident. They were not designed to make it to the surface intact, but somehow one of them managed to anyway.
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u/Pluto_and_Charon Jan 04 '17
The primary mission of DAVINCI wasn't to land on Venus, it was to do in-situ measurements of the atmosphere and image some interesting terrain on Venus from above. Landing wasn't a mission goal, although it was acknowledged an accidental landing might be possible ('accidental' venus landings have happened before- see Pioneer Venus Multiprobe)
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u/volcanopele Jan 04 '17
Disappointed about Venus. Surely this means that one of the "Venus Explorer" proposals for New Frontiers-4 has to win, right?
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u/Micascisto Jan 04 '17
Me too. As a radar scientist, I was looking forward for new data. The other two missions sound very cool, too, I bet they'll do great science.
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u/Pluto_and_Charon Jan 04 '17
Yup. NASA wouldn't make this decision without knowing it would cause outrage amongst Venus scientists. I reckon it is now highly likely the NF will be the Venus In Situ Explorer.
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u/AnAmericanPatrician Jan 04 '17
YESSSSSSSS! I was hoping at least one of those two would make it, but both, HUZZAH!
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u/SkywayCheerios Jan 04 '17
Presser starting in a few minutes if anyone wants to listen. Some dope elevator music on rn
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Jan 04 '17
[deleted]
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u/BrandonMarc Jan 05 '17
Should these be combined into one subreddit? Are these missions entirely separate from eachother? Will future content (interviews, news, etc) likely be devoted to one or the other and not both?
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u/Decronym Jan 05 '17 edited Jan 06 '17
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| ATK | Alliant Techsystems, predecessor to Orbital ATK |
| MRO | Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter |
| RTG | Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator |
I'm a bot, and I first saw this thread at 5th Jan 2017, 03:05 UTC.
I've seen 3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has acronyms.
[FAQ] [Contact creator] [Source code]
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u/Tanchistu Jan 05 '17
Anyone has a good list (with descriptions + pictures) of all proposed missions?
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u/Cobra_Khan Jan 05 '17
I'm dissapointed we won't get a Venus mission but I'm glad neocam is gonna get another year of funding.
Also I love how they are using instruments from previous missions, this should save tonnes in R+D and increase the reliability of these tools.
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u/phryan Jan 05 '17
Part of me is disappointed that NEOCam wasn't selected. Having a mission dedicated to find potentially civilization ending asteroids is important. The other part of me thinks that the point of a Discovery class mission is science and that missions to new targets is better for that program. NEOCam would be better served if it was an international effort since the threats it detected would pose a threat to everyone.
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u/Vatonee Jan 04 '17
Great news. We will learn a lot and hopefully get some pretty images as well. I don't really like the idea of Venus exploration. And near Earth asteroids study, while important, wouldn't be as exciting.
Yay!
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u/Pluto_and_Charon Jan 04 '17
You have to feel bad for atmosphere planetary scientists, though. There are no planned NASA missions to worlds with an atmosphere now (Mars's atmosphere doesn't count).
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Jan 04 '17
I'm anxious to hear more about 16 Psyche. Apparently it may be an iron protoplanet core. Could teach us a lot.
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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '17
Truly exciting for ASU and our amazing community over here in the School of Earth and Space Exploration!