- In the past year, NASA has announced plans to return humans to the moon and search for life on one of Saturn's moons with a nuclear-powered helicopter.
- NASA's 10-year plan also includes missions to probe the metal core of a dead planet, scan for alien life in a subsurface ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa, and photograph the Big Bang.
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NASA's 10-year plan involves billions of dollars and spans millions of miles. And much like the universe, it's only expanding.
Last year, the agency announced that it's planning to send astronauts back to the moon and eventually build a base there, with a Mars-bound mission to follow in the years after that. In June, the agency introduced a mission that aims to fly a nuclear-powered helicopter over the surface of Titan, an icy moon of Saturn's, to scan for alien life. NASA wants to looking for life in other places too, like the ocean below the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Other future missions will try to photograph our entire cosmic history and map the dark matter and dark energy that govern our universe.
Here are some of NASA's biggest and most ambitious plans for the coming decade.