This is "Europa Orbiter" (renamed "Europa Geophysical Explorer" by the Decadal Survey), which would enter Jovian orbit and then further brake itself into a low orbit around Jupiter's biologically intriguing moon Europa to spend a month mapping the moon's ice layer.

It would try to settle once and for all the question of whether Europa does have a deep liquid ocean underneath the ice (although the Galileo mission's studies now make this look highly probable), and would also locate the best possible spots for future missions to land on Europa and look for actual evidence of life.

The Orbiter would do the latter by radar-probing the ice layer to look for places where liquid water is relatively close to the surface -- and the Decadal Survey agreed with most scientists that the craft should also carry instruments to analyze and locate high localized concentrations of the other substances mixed in with Europa's ice, which are both important in general and vital in understanding its biological potential.

This mission has been high on NASA's wish list for a long time, but it's technically very complex -- its cost, by most recent estimates, will be around a billion dollars. So this year NASA simply cancelled any plans for it indefinitely.

The Decadal Survey, however, listed it as the one "Flagship" mission more expensive than a New Frontiers flight that should definitely be flown before 2013 --and also pointed out that many longer-range missions necessary to any proper exploration of the Solar System are similarly expensive and can't be fit into the New Frontiers program. It described several of these, and indicated that the two highest priority ones are probably:

(1) A "Titan Explorer" to follow up the initial exploration of that mysterious world by the Cassini/Huygens Saturn and Titan mission. This would probably require a probe using a variable-buoyancy balloon (maybe even a steerable blimp) to make repeated landings at several different places on its surface, with particular emphasis on finding the best local concentrations of complex organic compounds on its surface to see how far the complex reactions that precede the transformation of simple chemicals into life have been able to go in Titan's cryogenic cold.

(2) A Neptune Orbiter to do for Neptune what Galileo and Cassini have done for Jupiter and Saturn: orbit the planet to study it in detail, and make repeated flybys of its moon Triton (and maybe some smaller ones) to study them as well. This craft might also drop the first two entry probes into Neptune's atmosphere, although it's possible that these could be flown on a separate cheaper flyby mission.

The Senate, in its recommendations this year, paid no attention to this price problem -- but the House did, recommending that the cost cap on New Frontiers missions should be made flexible, from $500 million to $1 billion depending on the mission.

(It is, after all, likely that many of the mission types within the program could actually be flown for less than $650 million -- for instance, the estimated cost of New Horizons is only $490 million.)

It's quite possible that the Senate and the White House will eventually go along, providing the NF program with the flexibility it needs to work properly.

But the House went further, providing $40 million specifically for the Europa Orbiter mission, and directing NASA to use the money to continue development of the new technologies that it needs (such as lightweight and highly radiation-resistant electronics) "to ensure that this mission is ready at the earliest possible opportunity and that NASA preserves its core capabilities to implement and manage such a mission at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory."

The House rejected opening up this particular mission for competition, on the grounds that JPL has already done a great deal of technical development work on it and is currently better equipped to handle such a large and complex planetary mission than any other institution -- a situation which the House hopes will change for later highly expensive New Frontiers missions.

It's uncertain whether the Senate, during the coming House-Senate budget negotiations, will agree to go along with the House on this expenditure for Europa Orbiter -- especially since the Decadal Survey did not make any recommendation about its timing, except that it should be launched by 2013.

But it certainly shows that, as with an early Pluto mission, Congress is much more enthusiastic about this mission than the White House and NASA management are.

If Congress eventually ends up actually directing next year that the second New Frontiers mission should be Europa Orbiter, then it could probably be launched by about 2010-2011 (as against 2009-2010 for any of the four less expensive NF missions listed on the coming AO).

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