Sample returns and ocean worlds dominate recommendations to NASA
A report released today by the National Academy of Science outlines recommendations from planetary scientists for the next ten years. They're clearly thinking about the atmospheres and oceans on other planets and moons and want to bring back samples from Mars, Pluto's twin and a comet.
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- Origins: What was the early solar system like? Are solar systems like ours rare or common across the universe?
- Worlds and processes: How have the solar system bodies, and their atmospheres, from the giant planets to small bodies like asteroids and comets, changed through time?
- Life and habitability: What conditions led to habitable environments? Do those conditions exist elsewhere in the solar system? Is there evidence of past or present life there? And what can we do to ensure impacts from Near Earth Objects (NEOs) don't threaten that habitability.
Panels of experts in areas such as Mars, the Moon, planets large and small, considered input from hundreds of white papers over the past several years to provide this consensus from the scientific community on where NASA and other space agencies should focus efforts and funding.. Just as you don't spend all your funds in one place, the report recommends NASA balance its missions across programs in three cost classes: flagship (large), New Frontiers and Lunar Discovery (medium) and smaller ones such as planetary defense.
Some clear themes arose in the report.
Planetary Atmospheres
The flagship mission recommended by the report went to the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP), a mission planned to orbiting the ice giant planet and its moons. Scientists are eager to learn more about its atmosphere. Are there oceans on the Uranian moons? Are the rings around the planet (most planets in our solar system have rings, not just Saturn) mostly rock or mostly ice? Getting there would require about 13 years, even with a gravity assist from Jupiter with the first launch opportunity coming in June 2031.
A smaller mission planned to probe the atmosphere of Saturn would study violent weather patterns at the top of the gas giant's clouds and peer deep beneath to better understand vertical wind shear.
Planetary Oceans
After the Cassini mission discovered methane lakes and seas under a think layer of surface ice on Saturn's moon Titan, a proposed mission would peer through the dense Nitrogen atmosphere to determine how deep the outer shell of ice goes and and.
A similar mission is proposed to study the oceans expected to be found on Neptune's largest moon Triton.
The panels also recommended an orbiter/lander mission to Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, look for evidence of life during a two-year landed mission.
Sample Return
The report recommends completing what the Perseverance rover in returning rock samples from Mars. Sample return missions from a comet and another from Pluto's closer twin: Ceres, the largest object in the main asteroid belt are also highlighted.
A lunar rover, bound for South Pole Aiken basin, an immense impact crater on the far side of the Moon, is described collecting more than 200 pounds of material for Artemis astronauts to return to Earth for further study.
Planetary Defense
Scientists recommend prioritizing the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO Surveyor), a space-based telescope dedicated to the search for space rocks that might threaten Earth. A "rapid-response, flyby reconnaissance mission" is also called out to focus on NEOs between 50-100 meters in diamete. These are not only the most common, but also the ones that pose the highest probability of impact sometime in the future.
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