Onwards to Uranus and Neptune! |
Onwards to Uranus and Neptune! |
Jan 12 2008, 09:40 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
As soon as MESSENGER gets to Mercury, the most poorly explored planets in the solar system will be Uranus and Neptune. Could this lead to a revival of interest in the ice giants and their retinue, in the same way that the existence of New Horizons is perhaps partly due to the Pluto stamp*?
*via Pluto Fast Flyby and later Pluto Kuiper Express |
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Feb 26 2008, 07:57 PM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
I just had a probably very silly idea, and would like to bounce it off of our orbital dynamicists: What about using a cometary heliocentric orbit to reach Uranus or Neptune?
Suspect that the required delta-V might be prohibitively large, but here goes anyhow. What I have in mind is basically using the Sun for a gravity assist by doing a close flyby & throwing an orbiter into a cometary trajectory with its apogee tangental to the orbit of either planet; if the planet just happens to be there at the time, then presumably minimal deceleration would be required to enter orbit. Very simplistic, and probably not practical (thinking you might need as much as a 50 km/sec maneuver to swing by the Sun close enough)..but thought I'd throw it out there anyhow. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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