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NASA reveals 10-yr plan to explore time & space

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NASA reveals 10-yr plan to explore time & space

American space agency, NASA has revealed it’s 10-year plan to explore time and space, which involves billions of dollars and spans millions of miles, Science Alert has reported.

Last year, the agency announced that it’s planning to send astronauts back to the Moon and eventually build a base there, with a Mars-bound mission to follow in the years after that.

NASA also introduced a mission that aims to fly a nuclear-powered helicopter over the surface of Titan, an icy Moon of Saturn’s, to scan for alien life.

Here are some of NASA’s biggest and most ambitious plans for the coming decade.

1. Several ground-breaking NASA missions are already in progress, including the Parker Solar Probe, which will rocket past the Sun a total of 24 times.

2. NASA also aims to probe far from the Sun, to new horizons exploring the Kuiper Belt, a region of millions of chunks of ice left over from the Solar System’s birth.

3. NASA’s InSight lander has touched down on Mars and it is presently listening for quakes. Since the InSight lander touched down on the surface of the red planet, it has detected dozens of Mars quakes. The early data is giving scientists new insight into the planet’s internal structure.

4. NASA’s Mars rover is set to join InSight next year. NASA is currently building the vehicle in its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Mars 2020 rover will search for signs of ancient microbial alien life on the red planet, collect and stash rock samples, and test out technology that could pave the way for humans to walk the Martian surface one day.

5. NASA’s researchers hope a future mission to Mars could return the Martian rock samples that the Mars 2020 rover collects back to Earth.
Until NASA sends another robot to Mars that could launch the stored samples to Earth, the 2020 rover will store the samples in its belly and search for a place on Mars where it can stash them for pickup.

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6. NASA eventually hopes to send a crewed mission to Mars. But before that, the agency plans to return astronauts to the Moon and built a lunar base there.
NASA wants to send humans to the Moon again by 2024. Those would be the first boots on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended over 45 years ago.

7. NASA’s next Moon mission will test deep-space exploration systems that the space agency hopes will carry humans on to Mars.
Astronauts travelling to Mars would have to spend about three years away from Earth. In order to explore of the red planet, human travellers would have to be able to use the materials available on the lunar and Martian surfaces.

8. NASA also plans to investigate our Solar System’s past by launching a mission to an asteroid belt surrounding Jupiter.

9. NASA also plans to scan for alien life in the saltwater ocean on Jupiter’s Moon Europa.
The space agency is planning to visit that ocean with the Europa Clipper, a spacecraft that will fly by the Moon 45 times, getting as close at 16 miles above the Moon’s surface.

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