{"dataset":{"slug":"exploration-themes","title":"Future Exploration Themes","description":"The themes of future exploration — the Moon, Mars, Venus, ocean worlds, small bodies, observatories, and the outer Solar System.","version":"1.0.0","lastGenerated":"2026-06-29","license":"CC BY-SA 4.0","entityCount":7,"sources":["nasa"]},"entities":[{"id":"exploration_theme:astrophysics-observatories","name":"Astrophysics Observatories","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"The great observatories of the coming decades — surveying dark energy, imaging habitable worlds, and opening the low-frequency gravitational-wave and X-ray skies.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/astrophysics-observatories"},{"id":"exploration_theme:lunar-exploration","name":"Lunar Exploration","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"The return of humans to the Moon and the build-out of a sustained presence — the Artemis crewed missions and the Gateway station in lunar orbit.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/lunar-exploration"},{"id":"exploration_theme:mars-exploration","name":"Mars Exploration","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"The next steps at Mars — returning the samples now being cached by Perseverance, studying the moons of Mars, and preparing for human missions.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/mars-exploration"},{"id":"exploration_theme:ocean-worlds","name":"Ocean Worlds","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"The search for habitable environments in the outer Solar System — the subsurface oceans of Europa and the seas and organic chemistry of Titan.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/ocean-worlds"},{"id":"exploration_theme:outer-solar-system","name":"Outer Solar System","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"Reaching the least-explored worlds — an orbiter for an ice giant, and a probe designed to travel deliberately beyond the heliosphere into interstellar space.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/outer-solar-system"},{"id":"exploration_theme:small-bodies-and-planetary-defense","name":"Small Bodies & Planetary Defense","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"Future missions to asteroids and comets — for science and for planetary defence, including surveys to find the hazardous near-Earth objects before they find us.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/small-bodies-and-planetary-defense"},{"id":"exploration_theme:venus-exploration","name":"Venus Exploration","type":"exploration_theme","domain":"science","description":"A renaissance at Venus — a fleet of new missions to map its surface, sound its atmosphere, and understand why Earth's twin became a hell-world.","entryPath":"/future-exploration/venus-exploration"}]}