New Frontiers program

The New Frontiers program is a series of space missions led by NASA to learn more about the Solar System. The program focuses on medium-sized missions that can provide important scientific results. NASA invites scientists from both the United States and other countries to submit mission ideas.

The New Frontiers program builds on the approach used by the Discovery and Explorer programs, where each mission is led by a principal investigator. It is meant for missions that are too large for the Discovery program but smaller than the biggest missions called Flagship missions.

Currently, there are three active New Frontiers missions and one in development. These include New Horizons, which launched in 2006 and reached Pluto in 2015, Juno, which launched in 2011, and entered orbit around Jupiter in 2016, and OSIRIS-REx, which was launched in 2016 and studied the asteroid Bennu from 2018 to 2021 and returned samples to Earth in 2023.

On June 27, 2019, NASA selected Dragonfly as the fourth mission in the New Frontiers program.

 Missions 

 References 

Category:NASA programs