NASA’s newly announced Lucy and Psyche missions fall squarely into the second category. The robotic missions, planned to launch in 2021 and 2023 respectively, are set to target mysterious, unstudied asteroids. Lucy will follow NASA’s Juno missions out to Jupiter to study the Trojan asteroids orbiting with the gas giant, and Psyche will visit an odd metal asteroid, 16 Psyche, in the main asteroid belt—the only object of its kind in our solar system. Both missions hope to build on scientists’ understanding of the history of the solar system, its planets, and, of course, life. Psyche may solve some space exploration problems, too. Because a metal asteroid? Sure sounds like a good place to mine.
Both Lucy and Psyche are the most recent missions of the long-running NASA Discovery program, which specializes in missions that are quick, focused, and inexpensive—capped at just $450 million each. Lucy and Psyche beat out a number of Venus-related planetary science proposals and to be honest, it’s clear why.
Source@WIRED
