The NASA aerospace agency has approved two new and very interesting space missions. Within the framework of one, it is planned to land a flying spacecraft on Saturn's satellite Titan, and in the other, the collection of soil samples from the comet's surface. Both missions were selected from 12 proposals submitted as possible continuation of the New Frontiers program.
The first mission was named "Dragonfly". Within its framework, an unprecedented project is planned to send a robotic flying vehicle to one of Saturn's moons. The aircraft in the form of a quadcopter will be equipped with scientific tools to search for and analyze large organic molecules. During the mission, the robot quadrocopter will be able to visit and explore many places on Titan and in total cover a distance of several hundred kilometers.
The large and cold moon of Saturn has a dense atmosphere, and on its surface there are rivers and whole lakes of liquid methane. But this is not the only thing that interests scientists. There is a suspicion that an ocean of water may be hiding under the satellite's ice crust.
“This environment has everything we used to call the ingredients of life,” says lead researcher Elizabeth Turtle of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University.
"With the Dragonfly mission, we will be able to gauge how far prebiotic chemistry has come there."
The second selected mission is called CAESAR (Comet Astrobiology Exploration SAmple Return), and it is planned to return to comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The comet, we recall, has already been visited by the Rosetta spacecraft of the European Space Agency within the framework of the 2014-2016 mission.
After approaching a comet the size of Mount Fuji, the CAESAR spacecraft will collect surface samples and travel back to Earth, where it will arrive in November 2038. It should be noted that NASA has already collected samples of the comet as part of the Stardust mission. However, within the framework of the new mission, it is planned to collect samples for the first time directly from the icy surface of the comet itself, and not just particles left by the comet's tail, as it was before.
"Comets are not only some of the most scientifically important objects in the solar system, but also the least studied among them," says researcher Steve Squiers of Cornell University, who will be in charge of the CAESAR mission.
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Such an increased interest in comets is associated with the assumptions of scientists that it was comets that could deliver water and organic molecules to the early Earth, in fact, initiating the emergence of life on our planet.
Most of all, scientists want to get samples of the so-called "volatile" molecules of comet 67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which are capable of quickly passing into a gaseous state. According to the researchers, these particles may be the key to understanding the origin and history of this comet.
A choice of two missions was announced this week. Now they will have a conceptual stage, within which the scientists in charge of the projects will be able to work out the details. Unfortunately, both missions cannot be realized at once. The final stage of selection and selection of one of the two projects is scheduled for July 2019. The actual implementation of the winning project will begin in 2025.
Other proposed potential missions under the New Frontiers program included proposals to study Saturn and Venus, asteroids around Jupiter, and an autonomous spacecraft to Enceladus, another moon of Saturn.
At the moment, within the framework of the New Frontiers program, three space missions are operating at once: New Horizons (studied the Pluto system and is now heading to the edge of the solar system), Juno (the device is exploring Jupiter) and OSIRIS REx (flies to meet the asteroid Bennu, who will collect soil samples, and return back to Earth in 2023).
Nikolay Khizhnyak