NASA has selected the four groups of scientists that were left as finalists of its ‘Discovery Program’. Now, to decide who will be the winner and receive funding of up to 450 million dollars for space exploration, the US space agency awarded each of these groups three million dollars.
With this money, each of the groups will have to develop a plan to carry out a scientific mission in our solar system within nine months. After this period, they will deliver a report with their proposal for NASA, which can select up to two winners.
These are the four projects Selected by the US space agency:
- VERITAS: It will detail the map of the surface of Venus and try to answer questions about how and why this planet developed so differently from Earth.
- DAVINCI +: also seeks to go to Venus, but will focus on the gases that surround it. He also wants to send a probe deep into the atmosphere of Venus to see how Venus’s atmosphere evolved and if it had an ocean.
- IVO: Visit Io, a moon of Jupiter known to be the most volcanic body in the solar system. Your goal is to know more about the structure of this moon.
- Trident: It is a mission to Triton, one of the moons of Neptune. It also seeks to map its surface and clarify if there is an underground ocean there.
“These selected missions have the potential to transform our understanding of some of the most active and complex worlds in the solar system,” said Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA in an official statement from the agency.
Discovery class missions are considered small and cannot cost more than 450 million dollars. They are intended to complement NASA’s largest solar system exploration missions.