Opening New Frontiers in Space: Choices for the Next New Frontiers Announcement of Opportunity

摘要

In 2007 NASA began planning to initiate a new competition for a New Frontiers mission. Because NASA has now selected two of the five missions recommended by the National Research Councils (NRCs) decadal survey New Frontiers in the Solar System, and because the decadal survey recommended that the agency ask the NRC for further advice on the New Frontiers Program after several selections had been made, in March 2007 NASA asked the NRC to: Provide criteria and guiding principles to NASA for determining the list of candidate missions. These issues include the following: Should the next New Frontiers solicitation be completely open relative to any planetary mission, or should it state a candidate list of missions as was done in the previous AO. If a candidate list of missions is preferred, what is the process by which candidate missions should be determined. Specifically, there is a need to review the mission categories identified in the previous AO and see if the list needs to be revised or augmented in light of developments since the release of the last AO. Should consideration be given to a candidate list of appropriate science themes from the NRC decadal survey on solar system exploration rather than to specific missions. The original statement of task for the Committee on New Opportunities in Solar System Exploration: An Evaluation of the New Frontiers Announcement of Opportunity included the words excluding Mars in the first question. In September 2007 NASA amended the statement of task so that Mars could be considered in a discussion of the future direction of the New Frontiers Program. NASAs New Frontiers Program is a series of principal-investigator-led solar system exploration missions with a cost cap of $750 million. These missions are larger than the principal-investigator-led Discovery-class missions (with a cost cap of $425 million) but smaller than flagship missions, which are led by a NASA center and are defined as larger than $750 million, but in actuality cost several billion dollars.