Discovery Program

The Discovery program of NASA is a series of cost-effective, highly concentrated, scientific space missions. It was " faster, better and cheaper" according to NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin's vision of the (English " Faster - Cheaper - Better" ) founded Planetary Missions. The program consists of own space probes and so-called " Discovery Missions of Opportunity", by NASA -built instruments in space probes of other space agencies. So far, the only failure was the CONTOUR mission. Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander were not part of the Discovery Program.

Missions

Completed missions

Successfully

  • NEAR, a mission to observe asteroids; landed on ( 433 ) Eros. She is no longer in operation today.
  • Mars Pathfinder, a Mars landing module with a small Rover, after the completion of the mission it was shut down.
  • Lunar Prospector, a lunar satellite, which reached its object and crashed on the lunar surface.
  • Deep Impact, a mission in which a spacecraft slamming down on a comet, but still has a functioning probe, which can perhaps be used for future missions.
  • Stardust, a mission to collect particles from a comet's tail. She returned with them on 15 January 2006 on the back ground. The mother ship is in orbit around the sun and could be used for future missions.
  • The Moon Mineralogy Mapper, a " Discovery Mission of Opportunity ", was an instrument to explore the mineralogy on the moon and was launched aboard the ISRO orbiter Chandrayaan -1 in October 2008. In August 2009, the contact with the probe broke off.

Partially successful

  • Genesis, a mission to collect solar wind particles. On landing, however, failed parachutes and landing capsule crashed in the desert of Salt Lake City. In the first statements was indicated that still some particles can be investigated by science.

Failures

  • CONTOUR, a probe to leave the Earth's orbit was broken into three parts to the ignition of the own engine.

Ongoing missions

  • MESSENGER, a mission to Mercury, which started in August 2004 and now, after three swing-by maneuvers, entered into orbit around Mercury is.
  • ASPERA -3 is a " Discovery Mission of Opportunity ". It is to the influence of solar wind and the Martian atmosphere show and is on board ESA 's Mars Express.
  • The Dawn spacecraft launched in September 2007, the asteroids Ceres and Vesta will investigate.
  • EPOXI, a " Discovery Mission of Opportunity " for further use of the Deep Impact spacecraft to visit the comet 103P/Hartley 2 and the search for extrasolar planets.
  • NExT, a " Discovery Mission of Opportunity " for further use of the Stardust spacecraft to visit the comet Tempel 1, which was previously investigated by Deep Impact.
  • The Kepler space telescope, which was launched on March 7, 2009, is a space telescope that searches in a solar orbit by stars with irregularities in the light intensity. Such irregularities indicate exoplanets.
  • GRAIL, launched 10 September 2011, is a two- probe mission to measure the gravitational field of the moon.

Planned missions

  • Strofio, an instrument for analyzing the exosphere of Mercury is expected to be launched in 2014 on BepiColombo.
  • LaRa is a contribution to the ExoMars lander (2018), and aims to improve understanding of the structure and the state of the Martian interior.

Proposed missions

On May 5, 2011, three projects were selected under which the next Discovery mission to be selected among 28 proposals. The three proposals are:

  • InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport ), to investigate a Mars Lander of the structure and composition of the Martian interior and to broaden the understanding of the formation and evolution of terrestrial planets.
  • Titan Mare Explorer ( TiME ), a space probe to " splash down " on one of the large methane lakes of Titan.
  • Comet Hopper ( Chopper ), a probe that land on a comet multiple times and to change their location in order to document the changes of the comet over a longer period can.

Under these proposals, the stationary Mars lander InSight was selected on August 20, which will be started in 2016.

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