NASA might send a spacecraft to collect samples from a comet or it might visit Titan as part of its search for extraterrestrial life in the universe, International Business Times reports.
The space agency held a teleconference on Wednesday to announce the finalists in a contest to design its next New Frontiers program mission, which could launch in 2025. It chose Dragonfly, a mission to Titan that would investigate how habitable that moon of Saturn is, and Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return, also known as CAESAR, which would bring home samples from Comet 67P.
Comet 67P is special because a spacecraft has already landed on it — the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission flew around it in space for a couple of years and sent a lander crashing to its surface.
Titan also saw some action when the Cassini spacecraft, which spent several years orbiting Saturn and its moons and dramatically ended its mission in September by crashing into the ringed gas giant, sent the Huygens space probe down to Titan’s surface so scientists could gather data about the large moon’s atmosphere and surface.