Discovery program

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The Discovery Program of NASA is a series of cost-effective, highly concentrated, scientific space missions . It was founded after NASA boss Daniel Goldin's vision of "faster, better and cheaper" (English "Faster - Better - Cheaper") planetary missions. The program consists of our own space probes and so-called "Discovery Missions of Opportunity", instruments built by NASA in space probes of other space agencies.

The degree of success is marked in the following colors:

failure Partial success Successfully constantly
Table of contents: 1990s · 2000s · 2010s · planned
# mission
 image Start date (UTC) Mission description
1990s
1. NEAR Shoemaker NEAR February 17, 1996 A mission to observe asteroids . Passed the asteroid (253) Mathilde on June 27, 1997 . Orbited Eros from February 14, 2000 (433) and successfully landed on the asteroid's surface on February 12, 2001.
2. Mars Pathfinder Mars Pathfinder 4th December 1996 A Mars lander equipped with cameras and measuring instruments that set the first successful Mars rover (Sojourner) onto the surface of Mars.
3. Lunar Prospector Lunar Prospector January 6, 1998 Lunar orbiter. Reached a polar orbit around the moon on January 11, 1998. Hitting the moon on July 31, 1999, planned.
4th Stardust Stardust February 7, 1999 A mission to collect particles from the tail of the comet Wild 2 . The probe returned to Earth with these on January 15, 2006 and deposited a capsule with the samples. The mothership remained in orbit around the sun and passed Comet Temple 1 on February 14, 2011 as part of a mission expansion.
2000s
5. genesis genesis August 8, 2001 Genesis was a space probe mission to study the solar wind . Between December 3, 2001 and April 1, 2004, three high-purity collector arrays caught particles from the solar wind. The arrays were brought back to earth in a sample capsule , although the parachutes had not opened and the capsule was damaged and the samples contaminated by the unbraked impact.
6th CONTOUR CONTOUR July 3, 2002 The only complete failure of the Discovery program so far. Shortly after launch, the probe broke into several pieces in Earth orbit. The plan was to fly past the comets Encke , Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 and 6P / d'Arrest .
7th MESSENGER MESSENGER August 3, 2004 An orbiter that, after three swing-by maneuvers, has entered orbit around the planet Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun. The mission ended on April 30, 2015 when the probe struck Mercury after running out of fuel.
8th. Deep impact Deep impact January 12, 2005 The mission goal of Deep Impact was to explore the interior of Comet Temple 1 . To do this, a projectile was brought into the trajectory of the comet, which hit there and left a crater. The impact and the ejected material were examined with the instruments of the probe and with further earth- and space-based telescopes. In an extended mission, the probe flew past Comet Hartley 2 .
9. Dawn Dawn September 27, 2007 Dawn orbited and explored between 2011 and 2018 first the asteroid Vesta and then the dwarf planet Ceres .
10. Kepler Kepler March 7, 2009 A space telescope that in a fixed section of the night sky in the constellation Cygnus using the transit method for extrasolar planets sought (exoplanets). Was in operation until October 30, 2018 and found over 2500 potential planets.
2010s
11. GRAIL GRAIL September 10, 2011 Two orbiters for the precise measurement of the lunar gravity field. Controlled crash in the North Pole region of the Moon on December 17, 2012.
12. InSight InSight 5th May 2018 A Mars lander is to investigate the structure and composition of the interior of Mars and to expand the understanding of the formation and development of terrestrial planets. The landing took place on November 26, 2018 in the Elysium region .
planned
13. Lucy Lucy October 16 to November 5, 2021 A probe to the Jupiter Trojans . Lucy is scheduled to launch in 2021, pass an asteroid in the main belt in 2025 and Template: future / in 5 yearsexplore the Trojans from 2027 to 2033.
14th psyche psyche August 20, 2022 An orbiter for the asteroid Psyche , which consists mainly of nickel and iron. The start is Template: future / in 2 yearsplanned for 2022 , the probe is to Template: future / in 5 yearsexplore the asteroid from 2026 after a passage through Earth and Mars .
Veritas

Proposals for a 15th and 16th Discovery Mission were submitted between April 1, 2019 and July 1, 2019. At least one of the following missions is to be carried out; the decision is to be made in 2021:

  • DAVINCI + (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus) - is to use a flyby orbiter to investigate Venus and its atmosphere over a longer period of time . A daughter probe is said to enter the atmosphere after some time and examine it during the approximately one hour descent to the surface.
  • VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) - aims to map Venus in high resolution.
  • Io Volcano Observer - a Jupiter orbiter that is supposed to complete nine flybys on the moon Io .
  • Trident - a probe designed to fly past Neptune and its moon Triton .

Discovery Missions of Opportunity

  • The Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) was an instrument developed by NASA on board the Indian moon orbiter Chandrayaan-1 . The instrument was supposed to map the mineral composition of the lunar surface in high resolution.
  • Strofio , a mass spectrometer in the SERENA instrument for analyzing the exosphere of Mercury , was launched on October 20, 2018 on the European-Japanese probe BepiColombo .
  • MEGANE (Mars-moon Exploration with GAmma rays and NEutrons) is an instrument that will fly to Phobos and Deimos in 2024 with the Japanese space probe Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) . MEGANE includes a gamma spectrometer and a neutron spectrometer.
  • The Discovery Missions of Opportunity also include the extended missions of the Discovery space probes Stardust ( Stardust-NExT ) and Deep Impact ( EPOXI ), as well as the extended mission of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter space probe , which was not originally launched as part of the Discovery program .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Shannon Hall: Venus is Earth's evil twin - and space agencies can no longer resist its pull. In: Nature . June 5, 2019, accessed June 11, 2019 .
  2. ↑ NASA Selects Four Possible Missions to Study the Secrets of the Solar System . NASA press release dated February 13, 2020.
  3. ↑ Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus . PDF of a presentation of the probe concept at the 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2020).
  4. ↑ VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography And Spectroscopy): A Proposed Discovery Mission. Suzanne Smrekar, Scott Hensley, Darby Dyar, Jörn Helbert, and the VERITAS Science Team. EPSC Abstracts Vol. 13, EPSC-DPS2019-1124-1, 2019 EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019.
  5. ^ "Follow the Heat: Io Volcano Observer". AS McEwen, E. Turtle, L. Kestay, K. Khurana, J. Westlake, et al. EPSC Abstracts Vol. 13, EPSC-DPS2019-996-1, 2019 EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019.
  6. ↑ Exploring Triton With Trident: A Discovery-Class Mission . March 23, 2019. Retrieved March 26, 2019.
  7. ↑ NASA - NASA Selects Moon Mapper for Mission of Opportunity ( en ) Accessed October 31, 2018.
  8. ↑ Planetary Missions - MEGANE . NASA.
  9. ↑ MEGANE . JHU APL.

Web links

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