Posted on 12/26/2017 12:46:44 PM PST by Simon Green
And now it’s down to two: Dragonfly and CAESAR.
Those are the finalists vying for a billion dollar space shot—and a place in NASA’s coveted New Frontiers program.
The agency announced the decision Wednesday at its Washington, D.C. headquarters.
To win the chance to send a robotic probe into space, Dragonfly and CAESAR beat out proposals from ten other science teams.
“This is a very tough competition,” says Jim Green, NASA's Planetary Science Division director. "And these are very exciting missions."
Dragonfly—a visual mashup of a drone and helicopter—would land on Titan, a mysterious moon of Saturn that might harbor life.
“Titan is a unique ocean world,” says Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly’s lead investigator, “with lakes and rivers of liquid methane flowing across its surface.”
That, along with its thick atmosphere and rich organic chemistry, suggests Titan “has the ingredients for life,” she says.
Although no one is certain, primitive microbes—or something more—might flourish within the moon's dark methane seas.
After touchdown, the Dragonfly vehicle (a “rotorcraft") will fly around Titan, land in locations hundreds of miles apart, and sample the surface.
Detailed measurements of those samples, says Turtle, could answer “fundamental unknowns” about Titan.
CAESAR, looking a bit like a ceiling fan with only two blades, would land on Churyumov-Gerasimenko, an ancient comet with “a real jawbreaker of a name,” says Steve Squyres, the project’s lead investigator.
Comets, many scientists say, delivered water and organic molecules to a primordial Earth, perhaps igniting life here.
Yet the icy bodies remain an enigma to astronomers, ranking “among the most poorly understood” of celestial objects, Squyres says.
After landing, CAESAR will scoop up a sample from the comet’s nucleus, then bring it back to Earth.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Dragonfly…but only if mission control is called Wolf Den.
Yep. Until cosmologists admit their theories about the origin and composition of comets is completely invalid, there's not much point in doing further flybys.
Enceladus. Titan next time. Examine the gyser outgassing for life in the ocean of Enceladus.
If you watch this robotics video from Boston Dynamics then one would wonder why they don’t use it to produce a probe. You make one of those with more legs than 4. And the ability to completely eject a leg if it become hopelessly non-functional.
I predict that if they use this Helo model that it will be a very short lived mission. It sounds really neat, but there is just too much that can go hopelessly wrong.
Europa makes moresense than either of these.
Of course we were warned not to go there, so..... ;)
I don’t think they should do either.
NASA needs to focus on the all important mission of helping Muslims build self esteem.
Flybys are OK, but its a waist of money to build a lander to land on theoretical ice when no comet yet has shown to be made of ice,,
Only one Saturn moon (presume that they have narrowed it down to one or two), thousands or tens of thousands of comets. Comets within range narrows it down a bit.
Which comet do you pick and tricky to hit as it flies by. Some comets are only within range every 100 years.
I vote a planet or satellite of a planet.
Only one rocket available for this mission, so only one project gets the nod.
...
I wonder if a successful Falcon Heavy launcher would change that.
Actually rocket cost is only a fraction of the total cost:
Mission cost is capped at $850 million; launch cost runs about $150 million.
Flybys, landers....both are a waste of time, effort, and money, due to the fact that the astrophysics community will likely reject all of the evidence gathered, in order to protect their falsified theories.
yeah, i doubt they would work for a minute much less years at slightly above absolute zero.
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