AVIATR - Titan Airplane Mission Concept, Proposed unmanned aerial exploration of Titan Options

[Juramike]

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

[stevesliva]

Note that the figure is two gigabytes, and calling it 2 Gb rather than the correct 2 GB reduces the figure by a factor of eight to some eyes.

And 2 GB can be thousands of compressed photos. And they will be choosing the best from thumbnails, they say, which does sort of admit the data return would ideally be higher.