Earlier this week, NASA announced through CalTech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that it will soon choose between three potential new projects: a new Mars lander, a comet hopper, or a lunar sailboat. Each of the three teams proposing their individual missions will receive $3 million to "conduct its mission's concept phase or preliminary design studies and analysies," according to the report out of the JPL. The winning mission will be chosen in 2012, and will go on to receive $245 million, not including the cost of the launch.
The Mars lander proposal, called GEMS (Geophysical Monitoring Station), would study the interior of Mars in search of a deeper understanding of terrestrial evolution. Led by Bruce Banerdt of the JPL, GEMS would carry out three experiments: a seismometer for measuring marsquakes in order to gather information about the interior of the planet "from crust to core," a thermal probe beneath the surface to monitor heat flow from the planet's interior, and radio capability for Doppler tracking of tiny variations in the planet's wobble that would provide information about the size and nature of its core. All of this data combined would do wonders for our understanding of our planet and ones like it in the cosmos. "We want to know more about how the pieces that formed planets came together in the first place, and about the changes that took place afterwards," Banerdt said. "This would be a mission to understand the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets."
The second proposal, called the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME), would be the first in-depth study of an extraterrestrial ocean environment by landing in and floating on the large methane-ethane sea on Saturn's moon Titan. This particular project, of extreme interest to astrobiologists given Titan's looming role in the relatively young field, is led by Ellen Stofan of Proxemy Research, Inc., and would be managed by Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory.
The final proposal is the Comet Hopper, which intends to study cometary evolution by landing on a comet multiple times and observing its changes as it interacts with the sun. Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland in College Park is the lead investigator, with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center managing the project.
"This is high science return at a price that's right," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division in Washington. "The selected studies clearly demonstrate a new era with missions that all touch their targets to perform unique and exciting science."
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