Discovery Program  The Discovery Program is a series of Solar System exploration missions funded by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) through its Planetary Missions Program Office. Each mission has a cost cap, at a lower level than a mission from NASA's New Frontiers or Flagship Programs. As a result, Discovery missions tend to be more focused on a specific scientific goal (rather than serving a general purpose). The Discovery Program was founded in 1992 to implement then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's policy of "faster, better, cheaper" planetary science missions. Existing NASA programs had specified mission targets and objectives in advance, then sought bidders to construct and operate them. In contrast, Discovery missions are solicited through a call for proposals on any science topic, and assessed through peer review. Selected missions are led by a scientist called the Principal Investigator (PI) and may include contributions from industry, universities, or government laboratories. The Discovery Program also includes Missions of Opportunity, which fund US participation in spacecraft operated by other space agencies (e.g. by contributing a single scientific instrument). It can also be used to re-purpose an existing NASA spacecraft for a new mission.  , the most recently-selected Discovery missions are "Lucy" and "Psyche", the thirteenth and fourteenth missions in the program. In 1989, NASA's Solar System Exploration Division began to define a new strategy for Solar System exploration up to the year 2000. This included a Small Mission Program Group that investigated missions that would be low cost and allow focused scientific questions to be addressed in shorter time than existing programs. The result was a request for rapid studies of potential missions and NASA committed funding in 1990. The new program was called 'Discovery'. The panel assessed several concepts that could be implemented as low-cost programs, selecting 'Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous' (NEAR) as the first mission. NEAR became the first launch in the Discovery Program on February 17, 1996. The second mission, Mars Pathfinder, launched on December 4, 1996, carrying the "Sojourner" rover to Mars. These provide opportunities to participate in non-NASA missions by providing funding for a science instrument or hardware components of an instrument, or for an extended mission for a spacecraft that may different from its original purpose. However often the funding comes in, there is a selection process with perhaps two dozen concepts. These sometimes get further matured and re-proposed in another selection or program. An example of this is "Suess-Urey Mission", which was passed over in favor of the successful "Stardust" mission, but was eventually flown as Genesis, while a more extensive mission similar to INSIDE was flown as "Juno" in the New Frontiers program.