Mars and Jupiter top NASA's planetary exploration wish-list over next decade

Scientists are busy creating their wish-list of which planets they want to explore over the next decade. Topping Nasa's to-do list should be robotic missions to Mars and Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, the U.S. National Research Council has recommended.

For the decade 2013 to 2022, five separate panels of scientists and experts agreed on a suite of missions that would get the greatest scientific return from money spent, recognising that even these projects could be budget busters.

We have a long history in the planetary (exploration) program - of generating cost numbers that are too optimistic,' said astronomer Steven Squyers of Cornell University, who led the group that crafted the report and its recommendations. ‘The people who truly believe in some project tend to be by nature optimistic and that comes back to bite us sometimes.'

This latest decade-long survey of planetary science missions included input from an independent contractor to make sure the budgets were in line with what Nasa has projected - to be, as Mr Squyers put it, ‘brutally realistic'.

Nasa's proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year is $18.7billion (£11.5billion), but Congress is still wrangling over it. Human space flight, which accounted for about $3.2billion (£1.9billion) of the space agency budget in 2010, was not considered in this review.

President Barack Obama followed earlier administrations in recognising the end of the space shuttle era - the final mission is due to occur later this year. He also cancelled his predecessor's Constellation moon program, angering some lawmakers and former astronauts who argued that it would make the U.S. a second or third-rate power in space. Planetary science, largely accomplished with robotic probes and Earthly laboratories, costs less than putting people in space.



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