{"id":13369,"date":"2015-10-06T12:45:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T16:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=13369"},"modified":"2016-12-20T12:17:27","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T17:17:27","slug":"ucf-professors-land-nasa-grants-focused-on-asteroids-comets-venus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/ucf-professors-land-nasa-grants-focused-on-asteroids-comets-venus\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF Professors Land NASA Grants Focused on Asteroids, Comets, Venus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Physics<\/a>UCF professors are involved in two potential\u00a0NASA spacecraft missions that could take flight as early as 2020.<\/p>\n

The five proposed space missions would study Venus, near-earth objects and a variety of asteroids and comets. Each mission team will receive $3 million and have a year to get their proposals ready for a final round of review. At that point two missions will be selected to fly as part of the NASA Discovery Mission program<\/a>. The final two missions will get about $500 million in addition to launch funding.<\/p>\n

UCF Physics Professor Dan Britt, Ph.D., <\/a>is co-investigator of the Lucy project, which would perform the first reconnaissance mission of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. This collection of asteroids is thought to hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Harold Levison of the Southwest Research Institute <\/a>in Boulder, Colo., is the principal investigator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shows that UCF has become a serious player in NASA\u2019s planetary exploration program,\u201d Britt said. \u201cI can\u2019t wait to get started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yan Fernandez, Ph.D., <\/a>an associate professor of physics who specializes in comets and is the director of the UCF Robinson Observatory<\/a>, echoed Britt\u2019s excitement. He is a co-investigator of another selected project: the Near Earth Object Camera (NEOCam).<\/a><\/p>\n

NEOCam would discover 10 times more near-earth objects than all NEOs discovered to date, according to NASA. It would also begin to characterize them. Amy Mainzer of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory<\/a> in California is the principal investigator. Along the way, the project would also discover more comets and collect much more detailed data about comets already known to exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is so exciting,\u201d Fernandez said. \u00a0\u201cTo be involved with a mission that\u2019s \u00a0potentially answering such fundamental questions, and to be involved at this detailed level is thrilling,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The other projects are:<\/p>\n