Sentences with phrase «icy moons orbiter»

The report points out that in the past NASA has begun ambitious space science missions that ended up too expensive to pursue, such as the Voyager - Mars mission and the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission of the Prometheus program.

Although NASA terminated funding in 2005 for a proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (which would have searched for evidence of sub-ice, oceanic life on Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede), the Agency was still funding the development of a robotic submarine for exploring the sub-ice oceans of those icy moons in 2007 (Kathleen M. Wong, New Scientist, December 14, 2007).

Not exact matches

Ever since 2005, when NASA's Cassini orbiter found plumes of water vapor spilling out of cracks in the south pole of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, researchers have sought to learn more about the moon's mysterious interior as a possible abode for extraterrestrial life.

Around the south pole of Enceladus — a 500 - kilometer - wide runt of a moon many expected to be rather inert and uninteresting — the orbiter saw tantalizing signs of activity — plumes of water vapor venting into space from fissures in the icy surface.

Its next phase will be the Europa Clipper mission, a Jupiter orbiter launching in the 2020s to study the watery depths beneath the Jovian moon's icy crust.

The prime target of NASA's orbiter is Jupiter's moon Europa, which is thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell.

There are three other missions as part of this initiative, including JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, an L - class mission intended for a 2022 launch), Solar Orbiter (M1, intended for a 2017 launch), and Euclid (M2, intended for a 2020 launch).