#NASA’s next science missions will head for Venus, Io, or Triton

NASA just gave four teams $3 million each to bring their Solar System exploration dreams closer to reality. Two of the scientific teams have their sights set on Venus, one is focused on Jupiter’s highly volcanic moon Io, and the last is targeting Triton, a moon of Neptune.

“These selected missions have the potential to transform our understanding of some of the solar system’s most active and complex worlds,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a press release. “Exploring any one of these celestial bodies will help unlock the secrets of how it, and others like it, came to be in the cosmos.”

The four teams are finalists for NASA’s next round of Discovery-class missions. Discovery-class missions are considered NASA’s “small” planetary science missions. These projects can cost no more than $450 million and are intended to complement NASA’s larger Solar System exploration missions, including the midsized New Frontiers missions and the flagship Solar System Exploration missions.