Some researchers have hypothesized that Earth may have been seeded with organic compounds early in its development by tholin-rich comets, providing the raw material necessary for life to emerge. NASA has launched several missions to comets in the late 1990s and 2000s these missions include Deep Space 1 (launched 1998), Stardust (launched 1999), CONTOUR (launched 2002 but failed after launch), and Deep Impact (launched 2005), as well as some participation on the Rosetta mission.ĬAESAR 's objectives were to understand the formation of the Solar System and how these components came together to form planets and give rise to life. Another comet mission proposal, Comet Hopper, was one of three Discovery Program finalists that received US$3 million in May 2011 to develop a detailed concept study however, it was not selected. Background Ī comet sample-return mission was one of the goals in a list of options for a New Frontiers mission in both the 2003 and the 2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey, which were guiding surveys among those in the scientific community of what and where NASA should prioritize. NASA selected the Dragonfly mission on 27 June 2019 to build and launch in 2026. The CAESAR and Dragonfly missions received US$4 million funding each through the end of 2018 to further develop and mature their concepts. Squyres explained that knowing the existing conditions at the comet allows them to design systems that would dramatically improve the chances for success.
Comet 67P was previously explored by the European Space Agency's Rosetta probe and its lander Philae during 2014-2016 to determine its origin and history.
The two New Frontiers program Mission 4 finalists, announced on 20 December 2017, were Dragonfly to Titan, and CAESAR. The Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko as seen by Rosetta in 2015 CAESAR 's proposed target. The Rosetta mission also provides a vast geologic context for this mission's sample-return analysis. The CAESAR team chose comet 67P over other cometary targets in part because the data collected by the Rosetta mission, which studied the comet from 2014 to 2016, allows the spacecraft to be designed to the conditions there, increasing the mission's chance of success. Curation of the returned sample would take place at NASA's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate, based at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
CAESAR would be managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Principal Investigator is Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Had it been selected in June 2019, it would have launched between 20, with a capsule delivering a sample back to Earth in 2038. On 27 June 2019, the other finalist, the Dragonfly mission, was chosen instead. The mission was proposed in 2017 to NASA's New Frontiers program mission 4, and on 20 December 2017 it was one of two finalists selected for further concept development. CAESAR ( Comet Astrobiology Exploration Sample Return) is a sample-return mission concept to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
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