NASA has whittled down its next mission to another Solar System body to three potential candidates:
1) The Surface and Atmosphere Geochemical Explorer or SAGE
2) The Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer spacecraft or Osiris-Rex
3) Lunar South Pole-Aitken Basin Sample Return Mission, or Moonrise
Each proposed mission development team will recieve $3.3M to flesh out their proposals and one will be selected in 2011 for the budgeted $650M space mission scheduled to launch no later than 2018.
Personally I would like to see a new mission to Venus, since Moon and NEO are likely to receive scientific funding via the human spaceflight program if Augustine's Flexible Path set of missions is implemented by the Obama administration as an alternative to the current severely under funded Moon then Mars Constellation program.
Read more: http://bit.ly/4ySwTu
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