NASA has selected five proposals for detailed study as candidates for the next mission in the low-cost Discovery series of interplanetary spaceflights, to be launched in 2002.
One or two of the five proposed spacecraft will be selected next October for full development.
The five new candidate missions are: the Aladdin, which could be used to gather samples of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos; the Comet Nucleus Tour (Contour); the Genesis, a mission to take a sample of the Solar wind (this was also one of the finalists in the fourth round of Discovery proposals, when it was known as the Seuss-Urey); the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging Mission (Messenger); and the Venus Environmental Satellite (Vesat).
Source: Flight International
