During a two-day OPAG meeting in late March, officials provided a status report on the two outer planet exploration concepts now on the table: a Europa-Jupiter System Mission and a Titan-Saturn System Mission. Each of those mission scenarios has multiple components with both ESA and NASA contributing to whichever outer planet investigation is down-selected.
The Europa-Jupiter mission involves two orbiters with instruments designed to operate in the severe radiation environment of Jupiter. In addition to ESA and NASA, Russia also has expressed interest in the mission, proposing a Europa lander.
The Titan-Saturn flagship entails a main spacecraft that would orbit Saturn and deployment of secondary spacecraft to the surface of Titan. For the secondary spacecraft, there are proposals that would include elements such as a balloon for exploring the atmosphere, surface probes and even a mini-submarine for exploring lakes on Titan.
While I find this really exciting, this is going to happen at the expense of the Mars exploratory program. It's really too bad that it is going to cut short something that has been producing so much good science.
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