A Closer View at the Comet Hopper Proposal

Recently, NASA announced the three project proposals that were selected for future development, with chances of being turned into actual space missions in 2016. Comet Hopper, a project led by the University of Maryland, is one of the three finalists.

All three proposals have been selected under the Discovery Program the American space agency runs. It issues a call for submissions in June 2010, and about 28 entries were recorded. These particular three are all that remain of those, and only one will be developed by NASA into a space exploration mission.

In order to fully develop this mission proposal concept, the university will receive $3 million from NASA. A review of the finished Comet Hopper project will be carried out by experts in 2012.

At that time, the space agency will decide on a final candidate for the Discovery Program. NASA will fund the mission with a maximum of $425 million, excluding the cost of the delivery system.

The Comet Hopper is very interesting and promising, experts say, which is precisely what NASA saw in it too. If it becomes a reality, it will enable astronomers to get a better understanding of comets, how they form, and what the early solar system looked like.

The spacecraft that the University of Maryland team is proposing would investigate comet 46P/Wirtanen, by landing on the wandering space body several times. Over time, the sensors on the probe would determine how interactions with the Sun are shaping up the comet.

Comet Hopper would also conduct detailed, in-situ measurements of multiple portions of the cometary surface and coma, and would relay the data back to Mission Control, here on Earth.

“We've had some amazing cometary flybys but they have given us only snapshots of one point in time of what a comet is like,” explains Jessica Sunshine, the principal investigator of the mission, and a professor of astronomy at UM.

“Comets are exciting because they are dynamic, changing throughout their orbits. With this new mission, we will start out with a comet that is in the cold, outer reaches of its orbit and watch its activity come alive as it moves closer and closer to the Sun,” she adds.

“We would extensively explore the surface of a comet; this is something that has never been done before. We know that there are volatiles (molecules that easily evaporate at normal temperatures) inside a comet,” adds NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Comet Hopper project scientist Joe Nuth.

“We would go to places that are relatively flat and are likely hiding volatiles. Comet Hopper could be called a reconnaissance mission for an upcoming Comet Nucleus Sample Return mission, which has been deemed a high priority development effort by the Decadal Survey,” he adds.

The Greenbelt, Maryland-based GSFC would manage the mission. Lockheed Martin, KinetX, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the University of Bern, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Discovery Communications would be partners in this endeavor, SpaceRef reports.