Cosmic Visions
Cosmic visions is a European Space Agency initiative to plan missions to be launched between 2015-2025. And there is no shortage of ideas!
Missions include:
- XEUS – the next generation X-ray telescope, designed to look at the hottest and most violent regions of space
- LISA – a mission to detect and measure gravity waves, emitted when massive objects violently collide
- SPICA – a mission to explore how stars and planets form
- PLATO aims to search for planets orbiting distant stars
- TANDEM will scrutinise Saturn’s moons Titan (an Earth-like organic-rich world) and Enceladus.
- LAPLACE would explore Jupiter’s moon Europa – and world covered in ice but with a water ocean beneath the surface
- MARCO-POLO is a mission to return a sample from a near-Earth asteroid, which could be key if we ever need to deflect an asteroid in the future
- CROSS-SCALE plans to study astrophysical plasma’s in all regions of space.
- SPACE – a mission to study how the Universe evolved in infrared wavelengths
- DUNE – designed to study dark matter and dark energy in the universe
Not all these missions will become reality.
Which ones would you choose?
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The above banners have been taken from the ESA website.
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