These 7 Wild Concepts Are in the Running For NASA’s Next Big Mission

What should NASA explore next? The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine just published its proposed science themes for NASA’s fifth New Frontiers mission, outlining key priorities and offering a glimpse into the future of space exploration.

The report outlines a handful of mission concepts which the National Academies concluded will help meet key needs of scientists, while maintaining a balanced portfolio of missions. One of the lucky missions will likely be NASA’s fifth New Frontiers mission, with a likely launch sometime in the 2030s. Some of the promising candidates under consideration are a probe to Saturn, a network of sensors spread across the Moon, and a daring attempt to take material from a dwarf planet and bring it to Earth—reminiscent of the OSIRIS-REx mission, a previous New Frontiers selection. The report can be downloaded from the National Academies website.

Previous decadal surveys from the academies tackled the need to find habitable worlds, probing Uranus, addressing funding gaps in human exploration and habitation of space, and solving the outstanding mysteries of the solar system. The latest report is not a decadal survey, but was developed by the academies at the behest of NASA to assess the validity of each mission as the agency prepares for the future of New Frontiers.

The New Frontiers program “is designed to accomplish focused planetary science investigations, using innovative and efficient management approaches,” NASA’s website states. “The program’s prime objective is to answer unique science questions in the exploration of the solar system.”

The now-operational New Frontiers missions include New Horizons, which began in 2006 and explored Pluto in 2015, Juno (2011), which studies Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx (2016), which sampled material from an asteroid and brought it to Earth. One upcoming New Frontiers mission is NASA’s Dragonfly, a quadcopter drone slated to launch to Saturn’s moon Titan no earlier than 2028.

The recent survey described 11 findings in the survey and recommended seven missions be reviewed as candidates for New Frontiers’ fifth mission. They are the Centaur Orbiter and Lander, Ceres Sample Return, Comet Surface Sample Return, Enceladus Multiple Flyby, Io Observer, Lunar Geophysical Network, and Saturn Probe.

The Centaur Orbiter and Lander would measure chemical and physical properties of a Centaur—small icy bodies from the Kuiper belt. Ceres Sample Return would recover material from the dwarf planet Ceres. The Comet Surface Sample Return would do the same, but from a comet—an agglomeration of ice and dust flying through space.

Enceladus Multiple Flyby would scrutinize a small moon of Saturn that’s thought to harbor a subsurface ocean beneath its icy surface. The Io Observer would explore a fiery moon of Jupiter to better understand the process of tidal heating. The Lunar Geophysical Network would deploy a global network of geophysical instruments on the Moon’s surface to better understand our rocky satellite’s interior, from its core up to its crust. The Saturn Probe would be exactly what it sounds like: a spacecraft that would take fundamental measurements of the planet to better understand the formation of our solar system, giant planets, and Saturn itself.

As noted on the National Academies website, the timing of the fifth New Frontiers mission announcement of opportunity is delayed to no earlier than 2026, which has it overlapping with the timeframe for the sixth iteration of the program. Thus, NASA requested the National Academies “investigate and report on any scientific, programmatic, and technological advances that have a significant impact on the mission themes prioritized” for the fifth mission.

Though the report does not offer anything conclusive—that is, we don’t know what the fifth New Frontiers mission will be, and likely won’t know for years—it provides a roadmap for NASA. Once Dragonfly is off the ground, the agency staff working on the program will be able to focus more of its attention on the program’s sixth item.

Though New Frontiers’ next frontier is still a ways off, the mission concepts are a refreshing reminder that NASA scientists are doing their best to focus on the world of tomorrow—despite being hampered by the world of today.