NASA has selected four mission proposals for the Explorers Program to conduct study on exploding stars, distant clusters of galaxies and nearby galaxies and stars.
The space agency said Friday two studies will each receive $3 million under the program’s Medium Explorer project and two proposals will each secure $750,000 as part of the Explorer Missions of Opportunity segment to carry out nine-month mission concept studies.
The agency will choose one from each mission type in 2024 for the implementation phase.
A team led by Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology has submitted the UltraViolet EXplorer proposal to conduct a deep survey of the whole sky in two bands of ultraviolet light to gather insights on stars life cycle and galaxy evolution.
The research team of William Zhang at Goddard Space Flight Center has proposed the development of the Survey and Time-domain Astrophysical Research Explorer spacecraft.
For the Mission of Opportunity project, principal investigator Chiumun Michelle Hui at Marshall Space Flight Center will study the development of the Moon Burst Energetics All-sky Monitor, known as MoonBEAM, that would see gamma rays earlier or later than telescopes on Earth or in low orbit.
Mark McConnell from the University of New Hampshire also serves as the principal investigator of a mission to deploy a polarimeter on the International Space Station.
