What to know

Future NASA Missions

A NASA astronaut in outer space

The mysteries of space are being unveiled one after the other thanks to the efforts of NASA engineers and scientists. Throughout recent history man has made it into space, to the moon, have filled the night sky with satellites and stations, as well as put robots on the surface of distant planets and moons.

With most progress made in space, one name stands out, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, otherwise known as NASA. The skilled researchers at NASA has a pretty impressive lineup of projects for the upcoming decades.

GRACE-FO 2017

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-on or GRACE-FO is a mission scheduled in partnership between NASA and the German Research Center for Geosciences. It is the successor to the previous GRACE mission of 2002, and is scheduled for 2017.

Using high tech equipment like accelerometers, microwave K-band ranging instruments and sophisticated GPS receivers, the mission will orbit Earth to calculate how the planets gravity differs over time and geography.

The Deep Space Atomic Clock

NASA will be launching a small, ultra-precise, mercury-ion atomic clock into Earth orbit and put its efficiency to the test. They hope to find it efficient as a next-generation tool for spacecraft navigation, radio science and global positioning systems.

The Atomic Clock is hoped to improve navigation of spacecrafts into deep space, being 50 times more accurate than any navigation gadget of today.

Europa Mission

This 2020’s mission will send a spacecraft into orbit with Jupiter, but to monitor Europe, one of the planets many moons.

Scientists believe that if there is life outside Earth in our solar system it would be on Europa. The moon has a thick frozen crust, with liquid rivers underneath.

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