Discovery 12 Announcement Options

[Guest_vjkane2000_*]

Aerospace Daily reported on June 13 that the Discovery 12 announcement of opportunity would come soon.

"Ten Discovery missions have been selected to date, based on responses to previous AOs. NASA released an eleventh AO last year, but did not select a major mission from among the responses. The twelfth AO has been delayed by an internal review intended to make sure "all the processes are in place, make sure everything is fair," [Andrew Dantzler] told The DAILY...

[Kepler] and Dawn are on better footing now, according to Dantzler. Kepler will monitor 100,000 stars similar to Earth's sun, looking for evidence of Earth-sized planets. Technical problems prompted a thorough review of Kepler, but the program passed and NASA has accepted an eight-month launch slip. The mission now is scheduled to launch in 2008...

Dawn will image and measure the geophysical properties of the asteroids Vesta and Ceres.
The mission has been plagued by quality control problems with parts from vendors, including resistors and solar cells. Now, however, "Dawn is doing quite well," Dantzler said. "It's turning the corner." The mission is scheduled to launch in June 2006...

"The last couple of AOs were very rigorous in their requirements," Dantzler said. "It kind of forced proposers to propose things not the way they would like to. [It was] creating a lot of the problems that we've seen, a lot of overruns, a lot of early problems. The new AO takes care of that by relieving a lot of those restrictions."

[Mark6]

Aerospace Daily reported on June 13 that the Discovery 12 announcement of opportunity would come soon.

For certain values of soon...

"Two times two equals four -- or five, for particularly large values of two"