Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

I'm not sure exactly which forum this fits in but NASA has just released the AO for Discovery Program 2006 and Missions of Opportunity. See the Discovery Program Acquisition Home Page for more details. Click on the "Discovery AO" link to download the PDF.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Dantzler made it clear that if it is at all in his power to do so, he will pick two full-fledged Discovery missions this time around (regardless of whether he adds any MOs as well). In fact, he went on at some length about the fact that Mikulski's move had ticked him off in part because, while he thought he could probably find ONE scientifically worthwhile Discovery mission below the $350 million limit, he thought it very unlikely that he'd be able to find two of them. (He also said that, if budget problems force him to, he'd be willing to stoop to picking that one $350 million mission simultaneously with a more expensive one.)

As for MOs, he hinted that more than one might be picked -- in fact, he said that there may be more than one simultaneous MO picked associated with the Deep Impact extended mission! He made a vague reference to the possibility of "interplanetary observations" for one such Deep Impact MO, along with a comet flyby for another. But I have some trouble seeing what kind of interplanetary observations they could make with DI that would be worth the trouble -- which makes me wonder whether he may really be thinking about flying DI past more than one additional target, CONTOUR-style. Given the need for as big a sampling of different comets and asteroids as we can practically get, it would seem the logical thing to do if it's possible.