JAXA’s 22-Year Bet on Frozen Comet Samples: What a Multi-Decade Mission Timeline Means for Planetary Science Funding

In the world of planetary science, a decade-long mission is considered ambitious. JAXA, Japan’s space agency, is now weighing something far more audacious: a sample return mission that wouldn’t deliver its cargo until the late 2040s, more than 22 years from the earliest planning stages. The proposed Next Generation Small-Body Return (NGSR) mission to comet 289P/Blanpain would be, by any measure, one of the longest-duration sample return campaigns ever attempted. And that timeline isn’t a bug in the mission design ...