NASA’s next frontier: Venus, the moon, or an asteroid, Which should it be?

NASA has chosen three options to consider as its next target for future scientific space exploration, Venus, the moon, or an asteroid.

These three areas of focus are finalists in a competition which was designed to help the space agency determine where NASA should spend its time and money to get the most scientific value out of research about our solar system. It’s part of NASA’s New Frontiers Program, which already has two missions under their way. First is the New Horizons mission, a spacecraft which is currently on its way to Pluto and has already sent back images from a quick flyby of Jupiter. The 2nd one is called Juno,its a large-scale survey of Jupiter that is planned for launch in 2011. This competition will determine the focus of NASA’s New Frontiers’ third mission.

The three final proposals being considered are:

* Venus: The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer, SAGE,this mission is designed by Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado at Boulder would send a probe to Venus. The probe’s instruments would collect the data as it descends through the planet’s atmosphere, then it will collect and analyze geological and minerological content after landing on Venus’ surface.

* Moon: The Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission,this mission is devised by Bradley Jolliff of Washington University in St. Louis.It would entail dropping a lander near the south pole of the moon. The lander would collect material from the lunar surface, believed to have come from the moon’s mantle, and return it to Earth for further study.

*An asteroid: The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft,which is called Osiris-Rex and designed by Michael Drake of the University of Arizona at Tucson.This mission would instead set its sights on a nearby asteroid. Osiris-Rex would collect material from the surface of an asteroid and return the samples to Earth for NASA to analyze.

NASA will give $3.3 million to each of the three teams so they can conduct year-long studies to devise on their mission’s feasibility, cost, management and technical plans. The final selection will be made in 2011.