NASA revealed 13 science payloads that will be part of the inaugural flight of the Space Launch System - a megarocket that will replace the current space shuttle in 2018, according to National Geographic.
One of the 13 science payloads is a $16 million spacecraft dubbed Near-Earth Asteroid Scout or NEA Scout. This probe, which will make use of a sail to travel to distant asteroids, is going make history as the first ever solar-powered spacecraft to travel outside Earth.
"A sail wins the race in terms of final velocity because it's the tortoise and the hare. A chemical rocket provides enormous thrust at first, but eventually burns up its fuel. Since the sail doesn't use any fuel, we can keep thrusting as long as the sun is shining," said Les Johnson, technical advisor for NASA's Advanced Concepts Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
The team behind the probe is currently making a list of possible destinations for the spacecraft. When NEA Scout is sent out to a target location, its task is to capture a series of low (50 cm/pixels) and high resolution (10 cm/pixels) images to determine global shape, spin rate, pole position, regional morphology, regolith properties, spectral class and local environment characterization, according to NASA.
This venture by NASA is one of the solutions the agency is testing in order to cut the expenses involved in exploring space and the solar system.
NEA Scout is a 6U CubeSat developed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
