Flagship Program

The flagship program of NASA is a series of missions to explore the solar system. It is the largest and most expensive of the three mission classes of NASA Solar System program, the others are the favorable Discovery program and the New Frontiers program.

According to NASA, the flagship missions cost between two and three billion dollars. The objectives could complex missions to the clouds and the surface of Venus, the atmosphere and the surface of Saturn Modes titanium, the surface of Jupiter 's moon Europa, the deep atmosphere of Neptune, the surface of its moon Triton as well as the surface of a comet in the form of cryogenically preserved samples include.

History

To flagship program include the Mars Science Laboratory, the Cassini Saturn probe, Jupiter orbiter Galileo and the Voyagers. The Voyagers mark the transition from the original NASA mission programs, which were organized and funded as a series of different missions on specific targets, to the modern missions, which include the flagship missions. One of the original missions include, for example, the Marinersonden, the Viking Lander, the Pioneer probes, the Surveyor missions, as well as the Ranger probes. In the early 1990s met NASA's decision to pit instead of centrally planned missions to pre-selected destinations different mission ideas against each other. The competition was divided into budget categories, namely the Discovery, New Frontiers, and the flagship program. While competing in the Discovery and New Frontiers missions independent teams against each other, the flagship missions are still heavily influenced by NASA management. In addition, Discovery and New Frontiers missions will be carried out as often that a standard process is created, the researchers can rely on, while the flagship programs were always different organized and developed.

The 2011 published Planetary Science Decadal Survey Report recommended that NASA, as the highest priority to develop a sample- collecting Mars rover, the Mars Astrobiology Explorer - Cacher (MAX -C), the American contribution to the ExoMars program with the European Space Agency ( ESA). Furthermore, the mission should be a precursor to the proposed Mars Sample Return mission. As the second most important mission, the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission was chosen, which is to examine as part of the NASA -ESA Europa Jupiter System Mission to Jupiter 's moon Europa under astrobiological point of view.

Current status

Under the February 12, 2012 published draft budget by President Obama, NASA has ended its participation in ExoMars due to budget cuts to pay for the increased cost of the James Webb Space Telescope. In addition, all proposed flagship missions for an indefinite period were placed on ice. As of March 2012 there are no plans, additional flagship missions for the Mars Science Laboratory to perform.