Amendment 65: New Opportunity: C.4 Planetary Science Enabling Facilities - NASA Science (.gov)

Modern life is built on critical minerals and materials. These elements are key ingredients in the technologies that enable a high quality of life, such as the chips and batteries powering our electronics, the medical devices that diagnose and treat diseases, and the infrastructure of the nation’s power grid. The materials are also used to manufacture defense technologies, fuels and chemicals, aerospace vehicles, and automotives. Although the U. S. has geological resources of many critical minerals and materials (CMMs), some key commodities are only found in challenging forms, either scattered in trace amounts, chemically mixed with other elements, or both. The extraction, separation, and refining processes needed to convert these raw materials into purified products ready for manufacturing are expensive, complex, and energy intensive.

The age of exoplanet science took shape with the Kepler mission, and gained more momentum with the TESS mission. The initial goal had a simple definition: use the transit method to find planets orbiting other stars. Beyond that, scientists have worked hard and used multiple tools at their disposal to determine exoplanet compositions and other characterstics. Now exoplanet science is advancing beyond these initial stages. Planetary scientists want to understand not only the wide diversity in the exoplanet population; they also want to understand the different types of solar systems they're detecting.