Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity |
Discovery Program 2006 and Missions Of Opportunity |
Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Jan 3 2006, 10:19 PM
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#1
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Guests |
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.
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Guest_AlexBlackwell_* |
Sep 8 2006, 09:03 PM
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#2
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Guests |
Yeah, these downselects are notoriously unpredictable, which, I guess, is a good thing from a fairness standpoint. Now whether the selections will make any sense is another matter
I, too, think some sort of Venus proposal could make the cut. However, I wouldn't be surprised if a cometary/asteroid mission(s) is/are selected, especially given Stardust's success, the CONTOUR failure, the partial failure of Hayabusa, and the descope, near-death of Dawn. Having said that, nothing would surprise me at this point, except, of course, another round of non-selections, as happened with the previous Discovery AO. |
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Sep 13 2006, 01:41 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
I, too, think some sort of Venus proposal could make the cut. I think there's a kind of "knapsack problem" going on with Venus exploration. There's a will (or so we infer) to move ahead, but since missions must be shoehorned into Discovery/NF size caps, it may be inconvenient to design a series of missions each at just the right size and still go forward sensibly exploring the place. One simple experiment that must be flown is a top-notch mass spectrometer to nail down the minor atmospheric constituents. The cloud composition is still partially a mystery (two mysteries: is there chlorine, and what is the UV-dark stuff). Some descent imaging to test the feasability of aerobot-height multispectral visual surveys would be a logical precedent to a later, bigger mission. And surface studies galore remain. When you take the ESA orbiter, the possible ISAS orbiter yet to come, and the vaguely-scoped NF mission to come, it's not clear if any kind of mission we've ever seen proposed before would squeeze neatly into the gap between the already pencilled-in missions. Whereas the close-finishers Discovery missions to Venus that have come before have all been orbiters, an entry probe could be the possible winner now. That only means that the mission has to stand up to competition that may return science for weeks or months while such a Venus mission would only return data for hours. Of course, Deep Impact didn't last much longer than that -- but it had a little more glory to it than a simple entry probe. I'd love to see an entry probe that performs 15 good minutes of surface science after landing. That would be a great mission. The instrument failure on VEx opens a small window for another Venus orbiter to recover that science, but that doesn't sound like a tremendous concept by itself. |
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