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NASA Space Technology

NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions 106

Posted by samzenpus from the a-whole-lot-of-exploring-going-on dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is trying to decide among eight space exploration missions that include further exploring Venus and comet composition as well landing on an asteroid or examining the space around Jupiter. The space agency today began accepting solicitations for these space exploration opportunities and will ultimately pick one of them to begin perusing in 2009 with a launch date targeted at 2018. The solicitations and ultimate expedition are part of NASA's New Frontiers program, which has as its main objective to explore the solar system with medium-class spacecraft missions that will conduct high-quality, focused scientific investigations, NASA said. The first New Frontiers mission was selected in 2003 and will result in the launch of Juno, a Jupiter polar orbiter mission set to blast off in 2011."
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NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions More

NASA Exploring 8 New Space Expeditions

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  • Left off the list.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:11AM (#25829285)

    #9 Locate and retrieve the lost toolset

  • 50 Billion dollars (Score:5, Insightful)

    by symbolset ( 646467 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:15AM (#25829303) Journal

    That's what Detroit wants this year. If we gave it to NASA instead I would consider the money better spent.

    And if they threw in the rest of the 350 Billion they haven't stolen yet in the TARP, I could go for that too.

    I bet with 400B NASA could come up with an electric car. I doubt Detroit could.

    • Re:50 Billion dollars (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:40AM (#25829427)
      Or we could outsource to some other countries and save some money there. India's moon mission was the cheapest. Just an interesting thought!

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by dwarg ( 1352059 )

        Hmmm... There needs to be a "sad but true" mod option because I don't really find this funny at all--insightful if anything.

      • Edited (mis)quotes "American machine, Indian machines, all made in fooxing China" "Stranded in space with a hunk of junk designed by the lowest bidder"

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GweeDo ( 127172 )

        When India manages to do more than crash a camera into the moon then we can talk. Don't get me wrong, it is great what India just pulled off...but it pales in comparison to things that NASA has done and is currently doing. NASA's robotic missions are simply amazing. Or does India have an orbiting robot ready to go to Saturn that I am not aware of?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by thelexx ( 237096 )

        Without taxpayers, you have no space program. Without jobs, you have no taxpayers. Just another interesting thought!

    • I bet with 400B NASA could come up with an electric car. I doubt Detroit could.

      I bet with 400B, NASA could properly develop the Nuclear Light bulb engine, solving many of our launch issues in the process. Wouldn't it be nice to get 20000 tons into space at a time?

    • Re:50 Billion dollars (Score:4, Informative)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Thursday November 20, 2008 @11:35AM (#25832559)
      Detroit already did come up with a good electric car [wikipedia.org]. But, in a typically brilliant move for GM, they decided to cancel the program when it was still in the lease-only stage, revoked all the leases, refused to sell the leased cars to the many people who actually wanted to buy one, sent every one of the cars into a scrapyard compactor, and promptly canceled all further electric/hybrid development plans to focus on SUV's. This stunning lack of forward-thinking is just one of the many reasons why GM is in Washington today begging for a handout while smarter companies like Toyota are taking over the auto industry.

      • Fortunately for them their development efforts did yield a number of patents which they can exploit for profits when somebody else produces the electric car, without further effort or investment on their part.

        This is why patents are evil. They prevent progress.

    • The 'eliminate world hunger' or 'find cure for cancer' crowd still has priority over these random funds but I wouldn't mind killing off the human exploration project and using its budget to fund all of these missions (and use the remaining 50% for astronomy, e.g searching for Earth-like planets or Near Earth Asteroids).

      • Part of the wonderful things about research and exploration is that it pays off fabulously, in unpredictable ways. We cannot be sure that the answers to the "eliminate hunger" and "cure cancer" questions are not to be found on the road to Mars. They might in fact be found in no other way.

        We got a lot more from the moon missions than Tang.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by tbfee ( 1115043 )
      moon rover, 1971?

      • Limited production '71 electric vehicle. Low miles, no crash damage!!! Stored outdoors in desert climate, never flooded. As is / Where is: Shipping is not available on this item - buyer must pick up within 30 days of auction closing or will be resold as abandoned. Paypal or cashier's check only.

  • One vote for trojans (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Iamthecheese ( 1264298 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:17AM (#25829315)
    ...because protection is important with all the wierd stuff floating around.

    The possibility of humanity being able to stop a killer asteroid rises with more study on such bodies.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The Trojans mission looks good. Any of the two Trojans groups contains a bunch of asteroids all in similar locations with similar velocities. Once there, a spacecraft could hop from one asteroid to the next with very little fuel expenditure.

      • And anyway, those trojans are a tricky bunch. One can never be too careful.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by AdmiralLawman ( 1073516 )
          Its probably a good idea to see what crap Jupiter has collected in L points over the eons. Maybe we'll find an alien probe or something? Also does anyone know if the Trojan asteroids are more densely packed then the belt?

  • Give it a really big nuke power plant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:17AM (#25829325) Homepage Journal
    And seriously harden up the electronics. If the Pioneer and Voyager probes can do 30+ years, a modern probe can. Given the fuel efficiency of the ion drive, a probe could also carry enough fuel to perform a great many missions. It may not be able to do everything on the list, but a decent design should be able to tick off a fair few at less cost than one probe for each one.

  • My Gratitude ! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:24AM (#25829347)

    Thank you NASA!! You guys are one of the few things that make me very proud of the human race!

    bureaucracy and other badness aside, exploration is pretty damn cool.

  • Posed this question... (Score:5, Informative)

    by AmigaHeretic ( 991368 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:25AM (#25829351) Journal
    ... to the 5th grade class that I teach. It's unanimous, NASA should go to Uranus and look for Klingons.

    Some things never change.
    • I say we steal a Bird of Prey, loop around the sun at warp 10, and go back in time to save the whales. Or has that already been done? Those time paradox's in Star Trek always confused me.

  • Blimps, please? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 4D6963 ( 933028 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:28AM (#25829369)

    I want to see balloons dropped into the atmosphere of planets. Particularly giant planets. Best pick would probably be Saturn, but I'm sure we could learn interesting about Uranus if we sent a balloon there. And Neptune too, although I'm afraid the winds are a bit too violent there. Jupiter would also be great but I'm afraid the superior "surface" gravity there would make it harder.

    I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?) or Titan.

    Oh and to clarify my idea : the balloons/blimps would stay aloft for months on end, going up and down in the atmosphere on command to study different altitudes, drifting off the winds, telling us more about them, performing all the analyses possible, and not just about the atmosphere but also (why not) the magnetic field and whatever else might be interesting. And of course a good colour camera, so we can see what it looks like from there, see the clouds, thunderstorms, the moons through the coloured atmosphere, boreal auroras, and so on.. That would be pretty exciting.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

      learn interesting things about Uranus

      Crap, so much for proof-reading.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) *
      Wouldn't it be near impossible to get a signal through the clouds?

    • Re:Blimps, please? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chaoticgeek ( 874438 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @03:08AM (#25829527) Homepage Journal

      Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the idea of that would be hard to accomplish in the first place. Your talking about something like a weather balloon correct? I was watching some science channel show where they were talking about that idea, but it would be hard because a large portion of Saturn or Jupiter is made up of hydrogen and helium gas, and to get a gas lighter than that is kind hard.

      Unless you were to heat hydrogen or helium in order to make it lighter than the hydrogen or helium that is currently in the atmosphere. Other than that you would have to create a new element that had an atomic mass smaller than hydrogen which I'm not sure if it is possible to even do. Atomic mass of 0 would be an interesting element for sure.

      Then again I could be wrong, and if so let me know because that would be interesting.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

        Good point. I don't know, maybe you can make a transparent blimp with a greenhouse effect that warms the inside of it? Considered how cold these atmospheres are it would maybe be a trivial problem, I don't know.

        As for an "atomic mass of 0" well it's called vacuum. However we don't use it in blimps because in order to keep a balloon "filled with vacuum" inflated, you need something pretty damn rigid, which most of the time (I think) means too heavy. I'm far too unqualified to "call" any of these ideas, i.e.

        • Re:Blimps, please? (Score:4, Informative)

          by georgewilliamherbert ( 211790 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @05:44AM (#25830163)

          Not enough solar energy to warm a blimp that way, but radioactive heat sources do nicely, and yes people have studied hot hydrogen balloons / blimps on Jupiter, Saturn, etc. They seem to work ok, if you stay out of the regions with high wind shear (flying a blimp into a hurricane is a bad life path choice...)

          Reactors are better, but little radioactive heater units will work in a pinch.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 4D6963 ( 933028 )
            Interesting. With regards to high wind shear, does that exclude Neptune, or is it safe depending on where you send it? I assume Saturn and Uranus can be fairly safe, and that Jupiter is suicide?

      • atomic mass 0 exists (Score:3, Interesting)

        by r00t ( 33219 )

        Positronium is it. The mass is roughly 2x the
        electron mass, which is essentially nothing.
        The half-life is a tad short though.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium [wikipedia.org]

        There are other choices as well.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom [wikipedia.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sibko ( 1036168 )

        Other than that you would have to create a new element that had an atomic mass smaller than hydrogen which I'm not sure if it is possible to even do. Atomic mass of 0 would be an interesting element for sure.

        Hmmmm... an atomic mass smaller than hydrogen, possibly an atomic mass of zero. What, just what I say, has an atomic mass of zero!?

        Why, nothing!

        How about we make a weather balloon filled with nothing?

        • Well I don't know if it would float in the atmosphere then. I'd guess that to contain a vacuum and keep the balloon filled you would need to have it quite strong. And to do that it would add weight. Which would in turn require a larger balloon structure. Then that would require a larger vacuum and so on. I think it would get to a point where it would become too large to even attempt.

    • >I want to see balloons dropped into the atmosphere of planets.

      And how long before you think we'll have the technology to produce such devices (much less have them actually 'float'), given the 'environmental [metacafe.com]' hostilities, that we know of so far?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Fweeky ( 41046 )

      I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?)

      50-60km up, the atmosphere of Venus is roughly at Earth-normal temperature and pressure. Bog standard air is a lifting gas there too, being less dense.

    • I wonder if you could also do that on Venus (too hot maybe?)

      No need to wonder, it has been done: http://www.mentallandscape.com/V_Vega.htm [mentallandscape.com]. The aerostats (that's the collective term for all lighter-than-air vessels) were part of the same payload as landers for increased difficulty, too.

      Some quotes from the link:

      The aerostats were deployed at the anti-solar point of Venus, above the continent of Aphrodite Terra. During 46 hours of operation, they traveled about 1/3 of the way around the planet in the 240 km/hour zonal winds.

      After the end of signal, the balloons probably overheated and burst, somewhere on the daylight side of Venus.

      So there is a first generation. Many are ignorant of this and the rest of the Venera program (linked site is recommended). This ignorance has probably been "helped" by Soviet scientific successes not being considered the hottest stuff to tell people about.

      Th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by 4D6963 ( 933028 )
        Interesting. As much as I've read about space probes or Venus, I never even knew about it. I know about the Soviet landers, but never about the balloons. Quite fascinating.

  • Venus Balloon Mission (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MozeeToby ( 1163751 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @02:29AM (#25829379)

    Should be relatively cheap and reliable hardware. While the surface is the definition of a hellish landscape, the cloud tops of Venus are the only place in the solar system (other than Earth of course) with temperatures and pressures that humans could survive in. Not only is that interesting from a human habitation standpoint, but the mild conditions should also improve the lifespan of the balloon probe itself. Sure, you can't dig in the dirt like the Mars rovers can, but you will see a heck of a lot more of the planet from the air than on the ground.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by elthicko ( 1399175 )
      Developing large floating platforms for potential future colonization of Venus would be amazing. Sure, the thermal currents would probably throw everything out of wack, but it's worth trying.

    • Just remember, there is no such thing as a "soft landing" on Venus.

  • Protect our ass (Score:3, Informative)

    by Star Particle ( 1409451 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @03:14AM (#25829557)
    If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...
    • What's the problem on having earth totally destroyed? As long as every human being is destroyed, no one will be here saying we chose wrong, no history books saying we did bad... nothing really bad about that, not at long term. At most a lost "space" spider wondering why it's not being fed anymore.. No problems with that...

    • We'll be fine (Score:5, Funny)

      by dreamchaser ( 49529 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @03:40AM (#25829671) Homepage Journal

      If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...

      Don't fret so much. There's always Bruce Willis.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zxnos ( 813588 )

        he is getting old. we either need a back up plan or a remake with someone younger.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by MrNaz ( 730548 ) *

          We have a backup plan. Chuck Norris will roundhouse kick that asteroid the hell outta here.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by servognome ( 738846 )

      If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth, we might only have a few months to get a rocket up and detonate the target off its course. All other missions pale in comparison to one that could save humanity. I don't think we should focus on particular missions within our solar system, so much as the ability to launch a successful ground-to-asteroid mission within weeks, if need be...

      This kind of fear mongering sounds like George W. Bush... in Spaaaace. Spend billions and billions of dollars

    • If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth and detonate it, we are thoroughly fucked anyway because instead one meteor we will be showered by several fragments.

    • If we discover a large meteor heading straight towards Earth...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis [wikipedia.org] Happy reading!

  • I assume they'll peruse the proposals before they select one.

  • What I'd like (Score:5, Funny)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @05:08AM (#25830015)

    Hellow fellow humans,

    I want the humans to send a ship with lots of titanium and plutonium to a spot behind mars where no alien fleet is hidden.

    Thank you.

    Gahrull the devastator.
    Ministry of Discovery and Invasion.
    All hail the Imperial Queen.

    • I think Its time our petty souls return to Lord Xenu, NASA build us DC's!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      P.S. You should also bring a large number of rednecks on this mission, who will absolutely not be anally probed or eaten when they get to this spot where no alien fleet is hidden.

    • Hellow fellow humans,

      I want the humans to send a ship with lots of titanium and plutonium to a spot behind mars where no alien fleet is hidden.

      Thank you.

      Gahrull the devastator.
      Ministry of Discovery and Invasion.
      All hail the Imperial Queen.

      The amount of places with Elizabeth II as their head of state is simply amazing. I had never before heard of this one, for instance!

  • Obama is planning on cutting NASA's budget to give to education initiatives.

  • The Lisa [nasa.gov]is the one that interests me the most. It is a multi sat interferometer using differential time calculation. My speculation is that it just might pick up more than graviton waves. The data from this project should be examined by Seti.

  • Floating Cities. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Drakin020 ( 980931 ) on Thursday November 20, 2008 @11:02AM (#25832147)
    I'd say Venus. There has always been speculation about floating cities on the planet. It's surface area would not be habitable by humans, but at a specific altitude, the atmosphere is just right for human life. I know it sounds far fetched, but I would be interested in seeing if we could really pull something like this off...Almost Jetsons style.

  • A lander on Europa to search for life. We already have a mission to Mars planned for the same thing but it appears Europa has been overlooked.

    Since I have to pick one from the list given, let's go back to Venus.

    I really don't see the point of a Lunar sample return mission since we're sending humans back there in a few years anyway (I hope - are you listening congress?)

  • The author should have counted. Only seven were listed in the article. He/she left out Asteroid Rover/Sample Return (on page 7 of the announcement).
  • President-designate who is opposed to further space exploration (apart from once changing his tune when speaking in Florida).

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