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.

[Mariner9]

Seven months and counting.... and the Discovery mission canidates are finally chosen.

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/H...scovery_AO.html


"NASA Monday selected concept studies for missions that would return a sample of an enigmatic asteroid, probe the chemistry of Venus' atmosphere and reveal the interior structure and history of the Earth's moon.

Also selected for further study are three missions of opportunity that would make new use of two NASA spacecraft that have completed their primary objectives."


Much to my surprise, VESPER has reappeared and made it into the Concept study phase. I figured that after being studied so many times that it was cursed to never get selected, but maybe it is something like "Inside Jupiter", which kept popping up in different proposals until it finally gained approval as the JUNO mission under New Frontiers.

The moon mission seems somewhat lacking in scope.... a dedicated gravity mapping mission. I'm sure you can learn a lot doing that, but it also seems like it could be a rather limited payload, and cheap mission. I find myself wondering if the reason it made the cut is to have a fallback mission if the other two come back as too expensive or infeasable for some reason.