Abstract
In the wake of its budgetary difficulties, the disappointing failure of CONTOUR and partial failure of Genesis, NASA slowed the selection of Discovery projects from one every 2 years to just three in II years. As a result, by the end of the first decade of the millennium Discovery and New Frontiers missions were being selected more or less with the same frequency. After Dawn in 2001, missions were selected in 2007 and in 2012. However, during this interval the agency funded several cheaper "missions of opportunity" under the program by participating in India's Chandrayaan lunar orbiter, in ESA's BepiColombo Mercury orbiter, and the extensions of the Stardust and Deep Impact missions. At the same time, the average cost of a Discovery flight exceeded $450 million.
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Ulivi, P., Harland, D.M. (2015). The future. In: Robotic Exploration of the Solar System. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4812-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4812-9_3
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