NASA mission finalists would take us to Saturn's moon or a comet
If you had your pick, where in the solar system would you send a spacecraft? To an asteroid? Venus? Maybe one of Saturn's icy moons?
Well, NASA has some ideas about where it wants to go next.
The space agency just announced the two finalists for one of its next big missions out into the solar system, and there are two destinations in mind: a comet or Titan, Saturn's weird, icy moon.
“These are tantalizing investigations that seek to answer some of the biggest questions in our solar system today," Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.
NASA will now fund more studies about these missions before the agency decides to fully fund, build, and launch one of them, a choice they plan to make by 2019.
So, what are these missions, and what questions could they answer?
Dragonfly to Titan
The proposed mission to Titan — called Dragonfly — would effectively be a drone that could fly around Titan's surface, hovering and collecting data at different sites around the moon after its expected arrival in 2034.
This kind of data would be an incredible boon for anyone hoping to learn more about Titan, which plays host to oceans of liquid methane and boasts a hazy atmosphere covering the world.
It's a truly alien world that looks somewhat like Earth.
That's particularly intriguing for anyone hoping to learn more life and the diversity of worlds out there in the solar system and beyond.
It's also a relatively unexplored world.
The Huygens probe landed on the surface of Titan in 2005, beaming back amazing photos and data from the world's surface, but it wasn't a mission like Dragonfly.
Dragonfly would work as an emissary for humanity on Titan, collecting data over the course of its years-long life out there on the chilly moon.
CAESAR to a comet
The agency is also interested in going to a well studied, pretty famous comet and snagging some of it to study.
The CAESAR mission would fly out to Comet 67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko, suck up a piece, and bring it back to Earth for waiting scientists.
Comets are thought to be leftovers from the dawn of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers think Earth's oceans were seeded with water from the comets, which could have even helped provide our planet with organic materials that gave rise to life.
Comet 67P has already been visited by Europe's Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander. The Rosetta mission successfully mapped the comet, beaming home amazing amounts of information to scientists before its mission ended in 2016.
It may sound like another mission to the comet isn't necessary after Rosetta studied it so thoroughly, but in fact, the previous mission may serve as a boon for CAESAR, according to the mission's principal investigator Steve Squyres.
Engineers will be able to use the data gathered by Rosetta to create the exact spacecraft necessary to carry out the new mission, Squyres said, meaning that there's an even higher chance for success.
No matter which mission is chosen, it will likely mark a triumphant return to a world many scientists have long hoped to see again. Let's hope they will.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
