Space Science

Cosmic Vision 2015-2025

Eight new mission proposals selected for ESA’s future scientific programme

that proposed the mission. The space research com- The Science Mission Team defines a model payload munity’s long-term goals and ESA engineering teams for their research pro- undertake the technical grammes are to maintain assessment. The aim of the Assessment Phase is the present level of re- to define the mission to a search satellites in orbit sufficient level to show the around 2018 – 20 as scientific value and technical feasibility. well as working with and The main objectives evaluating possible new of the Definition Phase are missions. to establish the cost and implementation schedule In October, after a Space Science for the project. At the end Advisory Committee meeting (SSAC), of the definition phase, the candidate missions were selected for the Prime Contractor for further assessment and consideration for the Implementation Phase launch in 2017/2018. is selected. Competition That is the result of the Cosmic between potential Prime Contractors is necessary. It Vision 2015-2025’s Call for Proposals LISA (Laser Interferometer Space is also essential that the design and costing announced earlier this year. The response Antenna) moved from Cosmic Vision 2005- is based on the actual mission, i.e. with the was enormous and many interesting fields 2015. were represented in the proposals that selected PI (Principal Investigator) funded were presented. Fifty new proposals were instruments and selected new technologies, presented, twice the amount of proposals so that the competing contractors have compared to the previous ESA calls in a firm basis on which to make their Read more about the selected 1999. proposals for the Implementation Phase. candidates at: www.esa.int Until mid-2009, SSCA and scientific working groups will assess the proposals and pre-select three ‘class-M’ missions and three ‘class-L’ missions. Class-M missions The selected candidate missions are: are medium-size projects, where the ESA costs do not exceed 300 million euros. Astrophysics Class-L missions are larger projects, with cost envelopes not exceeding 650 million DUNE, the dark universe investigator and SPACE, the new near-infrared all-sky cosmic euros. By the end of 2009, out of these explorer. three class-M and three class-L missions PLATO - PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (plus LISA), two class-M and two class-L missions will be further short-listed for SPICA - SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics the definition phase (or mission ‘phase A’). This phase will be run by European XEUS - X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy a next-generation X-ray space observa- industries on a competitive basis between tory. the beginning of 2010 and mid-2011. By Solar System the end of 2011, one class-M and one class-L mission each will be adopted for Cross-Scale - multi-scale coupling in space plasmas in near-Earth space. implementation with predicted launch in Laplace - a mission to Europe and the Jupiter System 2017 and 2018 respectively. During the Assessment Phase, a Marco Polo - a near-Earth object sample return mission maximum of four missions are selected TANDEM to explore two of Saturn’s satellites,Titan and Enceladus. by the SPC, each mission supported by a Science Team, which includes the one LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) moved from Cosmic Vision 2005-2015.

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