REAL LIFE NEWS: THE NEXT SPACE MISSIONS TO GET EXCITED ABOUT
by Hazed
Cassini has kept us entertained for over a decade, but now its mission has come to an end, what do we have to look forward to? Well, NASA is reviewing proposals to return to Saturn, to take a closer look at moons Enceladus and Titan, which seem to be likely candidates to show signs of life.
There are plenty of other missions on the cards, some of which are well on the way to launching.
Next up is another mission to Mars, launching next May. The InSight mission (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport is its full name) will land a stationary probe onto the Martian surface. Its goal is to understand the planet’s beginnings by mapping the deep interior all the way down to its centre.
A new rover will be sent to Mars a few years later: the Mars 2020. In a first, this lander will take samples from the Martian surface with the intention of getting them back to Earth at a later date. It will collect samples in 37 test tubes and then immediately seal them, and deposit them in a safe place.
But that’s just the first part of a potential three-stage mission. In the second part, another spacecraft will land near that site, scoop up the samples, and launch them into space in a rocket.
The final part will sweep through Mars orbit to collect the samples and return them to Earth.
Mars is going to get even more crowded in 2020, because the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency have a joint venture, ExoMars, to land a European rover and a Russian surface platform on the planet then as well.
To find out about potential missions to Jupiter, Mercury and the asteroids, click the link below to read a New York Times article which goes into detail about the plans.
It’s clear we have a lot more exciting missions to look forward to.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/science/cassini-nasa-missions.html?nytapp=true
