Flagship program

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The flagship program of NASA is a series of missions to explore the solar system. It is the largest and most expensive of the three mission classes of the NASA Solar System program; the others are the inexpensive Discovery program and the New Frontiers program .

According to NASA, the flagship missions cost between two and three billion dollars. The goals could include complex missions to the clouds and the surface of Venus , the atmosphere and the surface of the Saturn mode Titan , the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa , the deep atmosphere of Neptune , the surface of its moon Triton and the surface of a comet in the form of cryotechnical count preserved samples.

history

The flagship program includes the Mars Science Laboratory , the Saturn probe Cassini , the Jupiter orbiter Galileo and the Voyager probes . The Voyager probes mark the transition from the original NASA mission programs, which were organized and funded as a series of different missions to specific goals, to the modern missions which include the flagship missions. The original missions include As the Marinersonden , the Viking lander, the Pioneer probes , the Surveyor missions, as well as the Ranger probes . At the beginning of the 1990s, NASA made the decision to have different mission ideas compete against each other instead of centrally planned missions to preselected targets. The competition was divided into budget categories, namely the Discovery, New Frontiers and the Flagship program. While independent teams compete against each other in the Discovery and New Frontiers missions, the flagship missions are still heavily influenced by the NASA administration. Also, Discovery and New Frontiers missions are conducted so often that a standard process has emerged that researchers can rely on, while the flagship programs have been organized and developed differently.

The Planetary Science Decadal Survey Report published in 2011 recommended that NASA develop a sample-collecting Mars rover, the Mars Astrobiology Explorer-Cacher (MAX-C), the American contribution to the ExoMars program with the European Space Agency (ESA) , as the highest priority . In addition, the mission should be a preliminary stage to the proposed Mars Sample Return mission. The Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission was selected as the second most important mission , which as part of the NASA-ESA Europa Jupiter System Mission is to examine Jupiter's moon Europa from an astrobiological perspective.

Current status

Under President Obama's draft budget released on February 12, 2012, NASA ended its stake in ExoMars due to budget cuts to pay for the increased cost of the James Webb Space Telescope . In addition, all proposed flagship missions have been put on hold indefinitely. In December 2012, plans for another ambitious Mars rover were announced. The Mars 2020 rover , based on Curiosity's technology, is scheduled to start in 2020 and, among other things, collect soil samples for a subsequent Mars Sample Return mission. The start of a new Jupiter orbiter is planned for 2022. The orbiter of the Europa Multiple-Flyby Mission is supposed to carry out more than 40 close flybys to Jupiter's moon Europa . In August 2015, NASA commissioned the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to design an orbiter for Uranus and Neptune. This could start at the end of the second decade or the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science 2013 - 2022 ( Memento of April 13, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (Published on October 19, 2011)
  2. ^ New approach for L-class mission candidates . ESA, April 19, 2011
  3. ↑ NASA Units Hope For Robotic Mars Mission In 2018 . Aviation Week, February 14, 2012
  4. ↑ Experts React to Obama Slash to NASA's Mars and Planetary Science Exploration . In: Universe Today , February 1, 2012. Retrieved February 18, 2012. 
  5. ↑ NASA shelves ambitious - and expensive - flagship missions . NBC News, Feb.15, 2012
  6. ↑ Curiosity successor is taking shape at astronews.com. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
  7. ↑ Europe Multiple Flyby Mission . NASA. Archived from the original on July 10, 2015. Retrieved January 29, 2016.
  8. ↑ Uranus, Neptune in NASA's sights for new robotic mission . Spaceflight Now, accessed January 30, 2016