AVIATR - Titan Airplane Mission Concept, Proposed unmanned aerial exploration of Titan |
AVIATR - Titan Airplane Mission Concept, Proposed unmanned aerial exploration of Titan |
Apr 16 2010, 12:20 AM
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Senior Member Group: Moderator Posts: 2785 Joined: 10-November 06 From: Pasadena, CA Member No.: 1345 |
The AVIATR mission concept is an unmanned aerial vehicle that would fly over Titan’s surface. It’s nominal one year mission would enable detailed high-resolution images of Titan’s diverse landscapes for better comparison to Earth’s geological processes. Selected regions could be imaged at resolutions near 30 cm/pixel, equivalent to current HiRise imaging of Mars. In addition, atmospheric sampling would allow a profile of Titan’s thick lower atmosphere and how it relates to Earth’s atmospheric processes and weather systems.
Further details of the AVIATR mission concept were presented at the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference 2010 and at Titan Through Time 2010. See: Barnes et al. LPSC 41 (2010) Abstract 2551. “AVIATR: Aerial Vehicle for In-situ and Airborne Titan Reconnaissance.” Freely available here: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2010/pdf/2551.pdf And also: http://www.info.uidaho.edu/documents/2010%...18467&doc=1 -------------------- Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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Jun 23 2010, 04:16 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
You're not going to get 30cm resolution from orbit around Titan. Furthermore, you're not going to get 3mm resolution from an aircraft. Infact, I've never ever heard of an aircraft getting 3mm/pixel on EARTH, let alone on Titan. Google Earth imagery is mainly aerial photography, and is typically at about 25cm/pixel - maybe 12.5cm in some places. That's still a factor of 40 (1600x fewer pixels) lower than the 3mm you're suggesting. If you COULD - you wouldn't need a 10 or 100 fold increase in data return - you would need 10,000 fold increase.
Covering just 0.1% of Titan's surface at 3mm/pixel, at 8 bits per pixel, with 10:1 compression? 83,000 sqkm. At 72 Gigabits per sqkm. 5,976 TERRABITS of data. At 30cm/pixel 0.0072 Gigabits per sqKm. 598 Gigabits. MRO with it's huge high gain antenna, in our back-garden at Mars (compared to a flight to Titan) has sent back just 42 Gigabits of data to date. I'm afraid your expectations are unrealistic, and your engineering suggestions are just in the wrong place in terms of complexity, feasibility etc given the budget, mass, volume etc. If we're going to go back to Titan, I don't think AVIATR is the way to do it. The way to do it is with TSSM, so you can have the montgolfière + an orbiter for relay. You're still not going to get anywhere near your requirements. But you've going to get a lot more data, that's for sure. |
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