NASA Shortlists 3 Ambitious Planetary Missions for 2016 Launch

Three ambitious space missions have made NASA's shortlist for a planned robotic planetary expedition to launch in 2016. The candidates include a mission to glimpse Mars' interior, a voyage to the extraterrestrial sea of Saturn's moon Titan, and a probe to take an unprecedented look at the surface of a comet's core. Ultimately, only one mission will win the coveted rocket launch, NASA officials said. The investigation team for each mission proposal will receive $3 million for a preliminary design stage, they added.

After NASA reviews these concept studies, the space agency will choose one to continue development leading up to launch as part of NASA's Discovery Program, whose missions have included the Messenger probe to Mercury, the asteroid-chasing Dawn spacecraft, as well as the agency's Stardust, Deep Impact and Genesis probes. The final mission will have a fixed budget of $425 million, not including the cost of its launch vehicle. Space.com