快猫短视频s charged by NASA with setting out the next decade鈥檚 missions for exploring the Solar System say a mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt should be NASA鈥檚 top planetary priority. The recommendation heightens the controversy surrounding an previous NASA proposal to visit Pluto.
The Solar System Exploratory Survey of the National Research Council also pushed for missions to Jupiter鈥檚 ice-covered moon Europa, and to return a sample from the Moon鈥檚 south pole, the site of the deepest crater in the Solar System.
NASA had considered both the Pluto and Europa missions too expensive, but the panel says that, with modest changes, the current budget can afford them.
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In 2000, NASA cancelled the planned Pluto-Kuiper Express probe because of cost overruns. But in 2001, planetary scientists got Congress to add money to NASA鈥檚 budget, warning that Pluto鈥檚 atmosphere will freeze by about 2020 as it moves away from the Sun and not thaw again for 250 years.
Yet NASA left Pluto out of its fiscal 2003 budget. Instead it asked for money to develop nuclear propulsion, which could deliver much larger payloads to the outer Solar System much faster than is now possible.
But panel chair Michael Belton of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives, told 快猫短视频: 鈥淲e don鈥檛 believe nuclear power is appropriate for the Kuiper Belt-Pluto mission鈥�, because it would go too fast for reconnaissance.
New paradigm
The report gave the Kuiper Belt-Pluto mission top priority among the mid-range projects ($325 million to $650 million) because little is known about the outer fringes of the Solar System. 鈥淭he information returned might lead to a new paradigm for the origin and evolution of these objects and their significance in the evolution of other parts of the Solar System,鈥� they wrote.
The second priority in the class is collecting samples from the Moon鈥檚 Aitken Basin, its oldest impact feature. The crater is so deep that it exposes the lunar mantle. Returning samples to Earth will help develop techniques for Mars sample return, as well as casting light on the very early history of the Earth-Moon system.
To keep within NASA鈥檚 budget, they recommended only one mission a decade in the 鈥淔lagship鈥� class, costing over $650 million. The first would be the Europa Geophysical Explorer, to orbit the ice-covered moon and measure properties of the ocean thought to lie beneath it.
The panel calls that study 鈥渁 stepping stone towards understanding the astrobiological potential of all icy satellites鈥�. They recommend a Mars sample return mission be next in line, shortly after 2013.