To boldly go where no NASA mission has gone before…
When I think of NASA, I think of an organization that is constantly pushing the limits and going where no one has gone before. NASA has a long and rich history of amazing missions. Some of these deep space missions include:
- Cassini–Huygens, which visited Saturn and its moons.
- Dawn, which visited Vesta in 2011-2012, and Ceres in 2015-2018
- Galileo which visited Jupiter and its moons
- Juno which visited Jupiter
- Magellan which visited Venus and Radar Mapped the surface.
- The Mariner program which visited Venus
- Mariner 10 which was first to visit Mercury
- MESSENGER – first to orbit Mercury
- New Horizons which visited Pluto and its moons in 2015
- The Pioneer program which visited Venus, Jupiter, the Asteroid belt and Saturn.
- The Voyager program which Jupiter, Saturn, first to Uranus and Neptune and voyaged into interstellar space.
These new missions, are no different. Pushing the limit and expanding our knowledge of the solar system around us.
- DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus)
- Io Volcano Observer (IVO)
- Trident (explore Triton)
- VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy)
According to a February 2020 NASA press release, NASA’s Discovery Program invites scientists and engineers to assemble a team to design exciting planetary science missions that deepen what we know about the solar system and our place in it. NASA explained that the goal of the Discovery program is to address questions in planetary science and increase our understanding of our solar system, or in other words… Discovery program fills in the gaps of our current knowledge of the solar system.
“These selected missions have the potential to transform our understanding of some of the solar system’s most active and complex worlds,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Exploring any one of these celestial bodies will help unlock the secrets of how it, and others like it, came to be in the cosmos.”
The missions will enter into a nine month study to further develop the concepts. Each of the four missions will engage in a nine month study and will receive $3 million to develop and mature concepts and will conclude with a Concept Study Report. After evaluating the concept studies, NASA will continue development of up to two missions towards flight, subject to successful completion of the studies.
NASA indicated that the proposals were selected on their potential science value and feasibility. The selection process came about through a competitive peer-review process.
DAVINCI+ will focus on Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed, how it evolved and determine whether Venus ever had an ocean. (Oceans are a key enabler for the formation of life) DAVINCI+ would plunge through Venus’ toxic atmosphere to provide detailed measurements of its composition down to the surface. Most Venus missions have had a short life expectancy based on the highly corrosive environment. The of DAVINCI+ instruments would be encapsulated within a descent sphere designed to protect them from the intense environment of Venus. (Both pressure and highly corrosive)
The “+” in DAVINCI+ refers to the imaging component of the mission, which includes cameras on the descent sphere and orbiter designed to map surface rock-type. The last U.S.-led, in-situ mission to Venus was in 1978.
The hope is that the DAVINCI+ mission would help continue to shape our understanding of terrestrial planet formation. This data can be used for our understanding both inside our own solar system and beyond to exoplanets. NASA has named James Garvin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, as the principal investigator.
The Io Volcano Observer IVO would explore Jupiter’s moon, Io in detail. Jupiter exerts strong tidal forces on Io which is believed to cause Io to be heated. The result is that Io is the most volcanically active body in the solar system, and some eruptions have even been seen from Earth telescopes. IVO would seek information on how these tidal forces help shape planetary bodies. Being a distant body, visited only a few times, very little is known about Io’s specific characteristics. It is not known whether a magma ocean exists in its interior or if some other, yet undocumented phenomenon is at work. IVO leverage close-in flybys to assess how magma is generated and erupted on Io.
This mission’s results could help revolutionize our understanding of the formation and evolution of rocky, terrestrial bodies. It could also provide details on how icy ocean worlds ( both in our solar system and extrasolar planets across the universe) form. Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona in Tucson is the principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland would provide project management.
Triton is the largest moon of the planet Neptune. Triton was the first moon of Neptune to be discovered. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, an orbit in the direction opposite to its planet’s rotation. Triton it is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System and is 2,710 kilometres (1,680 mi) in diameter. It is believed that Triton is a dwarf planet captured from the Kuiper belt by Neptune. NASA’s Voyager 2 mission showed that Triton has active resurfacing resulting in the second youngest surface in the solar system. It is thought that Triton may have erupting plumes and a very thin atmosphere. If the activity on Triton is has resulted in an interior ocean and the moon has an ionosphere, the result could be a possibility to create organic material that could “snow
Trident would explore Triton, a unique and highly active icy moon of Neptune. Based on the high activity of Triton, NASA would like to understand if a distant world could be habitable. Using a single fly-by, Trident would map Triton, characterize active processes, and determine whether the predicted subsurface ocean exists. Louise Prockter of the Lunar and Planetary Institute/Universities Space Research Association in Houston is the principal investigator. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, would provide project management.
VERITAS would map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and help better understand why Venus developed so differently than the Earth. Orbiting Venus with a synthetic aperture radar, VERITAS would chart surface elevations over nearly the entire planet to create three-dimensional reconstructions of topography. This would help confirm whether processes, such as plate tectonics and volcanism, are still active on Venus. VERITAS would also map infrared emissions from the surface to map the geology of Venus, which is largely unknown. Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, is the principal investigator. JPL would provide project management.
NASA explained that the concept missions were chosen from proposals submitted in 2019 under NASA Announcement of Opportunity (AO) NNH19ZDA010O, Discovery Program. The selected mission investigations will be managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA’s Discovery Program conducts space science investigations in the Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, guided by NASA’s agency priorities and the Decadal Survey process of the National Academy of Sciences.
NASA’s Discovery Program was established in 1992 and has supported the development and implementation of over 20 missions and instruments. These potential future mission selections are part of the ninth Discovery Program competition.
For more information about NASA’s planetary science, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/solarsystem
About The Author
Bill D'Zio
Co-Founder at WestEastSpace.com
Bill founded WestEastSpace.com after returning to China in 2019 to be supportive of his wife's career. Moving to China meant leaving the US rocket/launch industry behind, as USA and China don't see eye to eye on cooperation in space. Bill has an engineering degree and is an experienced leader of international cross-functional teams with experience in evaluating, optimizing and awarding sub-contracts for complex systems. Bill has worked with ASME Components, Instrumentation and Controls (I&C) for use in launch vehicles, satellites, aerospace nuclear, and industrial applications.
Bill provides consulting services for engineering, supply chain, and project management.
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