New Worlds Mission

[Cinder]

Does anyone know what the status is for this project? Or have an idea of how likely it is to be funded, or of how soon it might happen?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Worlds_Mission

Thanks.

[MKremer]

That Dailygalaxy blog post is bogus. If you read the source news article link at the bottom:

http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/2506ae93a5e8c8e87c5ab5bb9f45c5a9.html

you'll note that NASA certainly hasn't made any promises to "commit $3 billion" to fund any sort of mission, only $1 million, and that it is only one of 19 other studies being funded for *possible* selection for a future mission at some future time.

[Cinder]

Thank you.

[GI-Thruster]

You'll also note that there is no longer a NIAC so of course, NIAC is not funding anything.  One note on the above however, during the mission briefing with the press concerning Kepler, held last week on NASA TV, the chief investigator was very specific that they do have a follow on program to pursue if indeed they spot a bunch of earth-like planets.  The point he made was that sure, it'd be great to have detailed info on other earth-like planets but first we need to know they're there. . .

So, given certain kinds of success with Kepler, we may indeed see funding of what the Kepler team calls a "terrestrial planet finder."  Certainly, it would be worth equal expense as Webb.