Image: Daniel Oberhaus
Wednesday, NASA outlined the five finalists for future planetary missions, one or two of which it will actually launch. Here are the objectives of those missions, which will cost about $500 million each (they are outlined in much more detail here by my colleague Becky Ferreira):
- Study noble gases surrounding Venus
- Create a topographical map of Venus
- Explore the metallic core of an asteroid called Psyche
- Investigate Jupiter's Trojan asteroids
- Watch Earth for asteroids that might kill us