four new space missions in the running

In 2025, NASA will launch two new astrophysical missions at moderate costs but with ambitious objectives. The selection process for these missions has started and four proposals are under consideration. The selection of the retained missions is planned for 2021.

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After the start of a process to select one or even two new planetary missions in order to better understand Venus, Io or Neptune as part of his program Discovery, the Nasa has just put two space missions into competitionastrophysics as part of his program Small Explorer (Smex), which caps the costs of development and construction to $ 145 million. It also put two opportunity missions into competition, the costs of which should not exceed $ 75 million.

The teams of the two Smex proposals will receive a budget of two million dollars to carry out a concept study of a duration nine months. As for the opportunity missions, each of the teams carrying out these projects will receive $ 500,000 to carry out a feasibility study, also of nine months. In 2021, the NASA scientific committee will select a mission from each of these two categories with a view to launching in 2025.

Two missions to select from four proposals

As part of the Smex program, Escape (Extreme-ultraviolet Stellar Characterization for Atmospheric Physics and Evolution) is a mission which aims to detect and observe in theultraviolet of bursts of brightness likely to occur on the surface ofstars close to us. The goal is to see theimpact of these jumps in the habitability of the planets surrounding these stars. As for Cosi (Compton Spectrometer and Imager), it is a satellite which aims to to scan the entire Milky Way so as to measure the gamma radiation of radioactive elements produced during stellar explosions. It must also improve our understanding of how distant energy cosmic explosions produce the gamma rays.

As for the two opportunity missions, the first proposal selected concerns two small mission satellites Gravitational-wave Ultraviolet Counterpart Imager. Each sweeping the sky in a different length in the ultraviolet, these satellites aim to detect the light of gas hot products in the explosion that follows the formation ofgravitational waves caused by the fusion ofneutron stars or a neutron star with a black hole.

The second mission selected is the LEAP instrument (Wide Area burst Polarimeter) which will be installed outside the International space station. This instrument will be used to study the energy jets produced during the death of massive stars or during the fusion of compact objects such as neutron stars. The data from the instrument, which will operate in the gamma, could distinguish between different competing theories to explain the nature of the jets that move at gears close to that of light.