Where To? The Dream Space Missions of 3 Scientists

Less than two weeks from now, the Mars Science Laboratory will reach the Red Planet. After scientists hold their breath through the sophisticated but terrifying landing procedure, the car-size Curiosity rover should be in position to explore new regions of our neighboring world.

Curiosity may well capture the imagination of the world, just as the Mars Phoenix Lander did when it found evidence of water ice back in 2008. Nevertheless, the future of U.S. planetary science remains in limbo. As part of ongoing belt-tightening in Washington, President Barack Obama proposed to cut $309 million from NASA planetary science, or about 20 percent of its $1.5 billion budget.

"American taxpayers have always gotten a lot of bang for their buck from planetary science, so this proposed action by the administration is, frankly, puzzling," says Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., and member of the Dawn mission now surveying the asteroid belt. However, Congress would have to approve the cuts, and "there's an awful lot of support among lawmakers for restoring the budget," he says, "so that's uplifting."

Budget worries are business as usual for publicly funded scientists. Yet, even as the money for future missions is on the chopping block, the array of targets in the solar system has become all the more enticing. Besides the MSL Curiosity rover approaching Mars, there's news on a seemingly weekly basis about frozen lakes on Saturn's moon Titan or a subsurface ocean on Jupiter's moon Europa.

Some countries are prepping to go to these faraway places. China is vastly ramping up its space program; the European Space Agency just approved a probe for Jupiter's icy moons. NASA certainly wants to. About every 10 years, the agency organizes a panel of planetary scientists to boil down hopes and dreams into a budget- and timeline-conscious report called a decadal survey. The latest version, Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science, was published last year.

In the same spirit, we interviewed three top planetary scientists about their dream missions?without budgetary, timeline or bureaucratic constraints. So, where to?

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/nasa/the-dream-space-missions-of-3-scientists?src=rss

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