Titan drone, comet sampler picked as finalists for NASA mission
Interesting times ahead for any fellow space cadets, two really good missions with solid science and discovery behind them. Don't know which I would choose if I was on the committee - the Titan mission slightly leads on 'cool factor'. Which would you choose?NASA has narrowed its choices for a new billion-dollar robotic space mission: A nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the hazy landscape of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, or a probe to scoop up a piece of a comet and return it to Earth.
The space agency announced its selections Wednesday, picking two concepts from 12 proposals submitted by scientists earlier this year in a competition to win government funding to build and launch a mission by the end of 2025.
The teams behind the Dragonfly mission to Titan and the CAESAR mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko will receive $4 million from NASA over the next year to refine their plans and designs, setting the stage for NASA to decide in July 2019 which mission will go forward to launch.