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ESA Selects Next Generation Space Missions

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can't-they-just-make-orange-juice-spheres dept.

davecl writes "The European Space Agency has announced the results of its Cosmic Visions 2015-2025 call for proposals. Fifty space science missions for the next decade were proposed, with just seven selected. They range from X-ray and far-infrared observatories to planet finders and a near-earth asteroid sample return mission. These seven, together with the LISA gravitational wave observatory, will go ahead for further study in the next few years, and then two will be chosen for launch in 2015-2017."

2 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sad... by jpflip · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Air is pretty darn useful for carrying away heat by conduction and convection flows. So the XBox 360 should have more overheating problems in vacuum.

    Physicists can't resist this kind of question...

  2. Re:Mars by Original+Replica · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "mind-blowingly awesome" also loses out to the problem of: Can we get them there and back alive? If everyone dies, suddenly it become mind-blowingly stupid. We will see long term inhabited space stations with centrifugal gravity and greenhouses before we will be sending live humans on multi-year missions outside of Earth orbit.

    --
    We are all just people.