NASA picks two finalists for upcoming space missions: a trip to a comet and one to Saturn's moon Titan
A mission to return a comet sample to Earth and one to explore different parts of Saturn’s moon Titan, to see if it hosts life were selected today by NASA as finalists in a competition for a future robotic mission in our Solar System, part of a program called New Frontiers.
The first mission, spearheaded by Steve Squyres at Cornell University, is called CAESAR, or Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return. It will involve sending a spacecraft to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the same comet recently explored by the European Space Agency, collecting at least 3.5 ounces of samples from the comet’s surface, and returning those samples back to Earth. The mission will collect the organic compounds which constitute the building blocks of life...