NASA to visit: Venus or the Psyche asteroid?

[Brian G Turner]

NASA have been granted funding to look into a couple of budget missions, of which two forerunners appear to be a new probe to Venus, or a visit to the Psyche asteroid:
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...ons-will-head-for-asteroids-or-hellish-venus/

The real shame is that - at present - NASA appear unable to follow-up on both options, at this time.

Any suggestions here as to which you'd prefer?

I've always been a sucker for a lander on Venus, especially to improve upon the Russian Venera missions.

 

[Vertigo]

Sounds like there's actually a third mission: NEOCam "The mission aims to detect and classify a million asteroids over its four year lifetime" and they say "Next September NASA will choose one or two of these missions"

not sure the Venus one is actually a lander. It looks like one component will orbit, mapping the surface and the other "DAVINCI would dive into the planet’s dense, toxic atmosphere to study its chemical composition and look for any active volcanoes on the surface"

But as you say it's difficult as I'd like to see all three but then it would be hard to come up with a space exploration that I wouldn't like to witness!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Surely Europa and Enceladus should be the priorities.

 

[Vertigo]

Surely Europa and Enceladus should be the priorities.

I suspect they wouldn't fall into this particular program of "budget" missions.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

True. A shame we can't "just" send some cameras there...