Monday August 22 2022 09:12 PM
NASA has announced that it is studying four new mission proposals to study topics in astrophysics. Each proposal was funded for nine months of conceptual study, after which two will be selected to be launched in 2027 and 2028.
The four mission concepts cover topics including studying the sky in the ultraviolet range to learn about the evolution of galaxies, using X-ray and ultraviolet sensitive telescopes to study short events such as supernova explosions, searching almost the entire sky for gamma-ray bursts, and studying gamma-ray bursts from International Space Station.
The concepts are part of NASA’s Medium Explorers Program, divided into the Medium Explorer section and the Opportunity mission section, Digitartlends reported.
“The NASA Explorers Program has a proud tradition of supporting innovative approaches to exceptional science, and these choices hold the same promise,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in a statement. “From studying the evolution of galaxies to high-energy explosive events, these proposals inspire in scope and creativity to explore the unknown in our world.”
Astrophysics is a topic that doesn’t always get as much general interest as topics like planetary science, but it is crucial to understanding astronomical objects from smaller ones like planets and moons to entire galaxies and how they interact. The Explorers Program funds projects in topics such as geophysics, heliophysics, and astrophysics.
Previous missions of the Explorers Program include the NEOWISE infrared space telescope, which for the first time spotted a comet close to Earth, the NuSTAR X-ray telescope, which provided news to determine the cosmic weirdness in the X-ray wavelength, and the Transiting Exoplanet Reconnaissance Satellite, or TESS , who discovered more than 5,000 candidate exoplanets.
The program also includes the upcoming SPHEREx mission, which scans the entire sky to verify the origins of the universe, scheduled to launch in 2025.
The idea of the program is to fund relatively low-cost missions, so the missions recently selected under the Medium Explorer program will have a total budget of $300 million not including the launch vehicle, while the Opportunity mission has a total budget of $80 million.
Source: Technology: NASA announces 4 new proposals for an astrophysics mission