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SpaceNut

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From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,431

Re: Future Nasa Mission selection process

We Nasa has a tough road ahead with trying to do everything that it is currently doing while adding in the CEV developement adn lots more. Adding more projects just further makes the money available to justify to current missions that are past there initial finding and are well onto there future secondary missions more difficult to select which to cancel or to put on hold as well as to delay.

[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9678603/]Five projects make progress on final frontier
‘Starshade,’ lunar telescope and other plans win more NASA funding[/url]

A space telescope that could theoretically resolve weather patterns and continents on Earthlike planets around other stars is among five ideas selected by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts for more detailed study over the next two years.

Some would argue against the need for this with regards to the vision as a not needed now item.

Here are the list of projects:

Five proposals were selected for the 2005 Phase 2 studies, with the performance period from Sept. 1, 2005 to Aug. 31, 2007:

"New Worlds Imager," with Webster Cash of the University of Colorado at Boulder as principal investigator. The project calls for creating an orbiting "starshade," as big as a soccer field and shaped like a daisy, which would funnel light from distant planets between its petals to a second spacecraft trailing 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) behind.

"A Deep Field Infrared Observatory near the Lunar Pole," with Simon Worden of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory as principal investigator. This is a project looking into the feasibility of developing a liquid-mirror telescope for infrared observations from near the moon's south pole.

"Redesigning Living Organisms for Mars," with Wendy Boss of North Carolina State University as the principal investigator. The study would look into the possibility of making genetic modifications in plants so that they would be more suited for survival in the high-radiation, low-temperature conditions found on Mars.

"Microbots for Large-Scale Planetary Surface and Subsurface Exploration," with Steven Dubowsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as principal investigator. Researchers are studing the feasibility of using a large number of small, spherical mobile robots to range over a planet's surface and subsurface, including caves and crevasses. The approach is seen as an alternative to the current system of rovers and landers used for planetary exploration.

"Investigation of the Feasibility of Laser Trapped Mirrors," with Elizabeth McCormack of Bryn Mawr College as the principal investigator. This concept involves using two sets of laser beams to give structure to an ultra-thin layer of particles, which could serve as a mirror surface for astronomical observations. Theoretically, a laser-trapped mirror measuring 115 feet wide (35 meters wide) could be just 100 nanometers thick — a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair — and require less than 3.5 ounces (100 grams) of material.

Each of these are great oportunities to advance the science of our suroundings.