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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Jun 28 2010, 04:23 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 131 Joined: 30-August 06 From: Moscow, Idaho Member No.: 1086 |
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. I'd love to have a $4 Billion dollar Titan mission! But unfortunately, TSSM is dead. We're going to Europa instead. The question now becomes: do we wait and hold our breath demanding a new $4 Billion Titan mission, or do we explore piecemeal instead of all at once? Even if Europa flies on time, and that's a big if, a future Titan flagship wouldn't get a new start until after EJSM launches. That's in 2020. So say we get a new start in 2020. And we take 10 years building before we launch, too. Then we launch in 2030. We have a 7-year, Cassini-like cruise, say. Now it's 2037, and we're finally back at Titan with a flagship, if everything goes perfectly. The flagship has a 4-year nominal mission, say. Without any extended mission, it would end in 2041. Who among us will still be alive then, and not in a nursing home? I'm pretty young as far as these things go, and I'd be 64 then if everything went like that. Instead I suggest that we take another approach. The Mars Exploration Program was implemented after Mars Observer blew up in 1993, and they realized that they could put together a more compelling scientific program by flying a small mission every 26 months rather than a giant mission every 20 years. This approach has been so successful that today more planetary dollars are spent at Mars than for any other target, by far. When you stop to think about it, this is pretty amazing. As recently as the mid-'90s it was not clear that Mars would become the focus of the American planetary program. The smaller, more frequent Mars missions keep the scientific community interested, have less programmatic risk, and allow follow-ups on previous discoveries in a human lifetime. They built an amazing program. Then they pissed it all away with MSL. But I digress. We should be exploring Titan the same way as we used to explore Mars. One reason to do this is that we can. Numerous mission concept studies have shown that you can't get anything even into orbit around Europa for less than $1B. By the time that you get into orbit around Europa, the radiation will fry you in 6 months. This is why EJSM is going to cost $3B and only live for 6 months -- it's inherent in the physics of getting to Europa and doing science there. In contrast Titan is easy to get to and explore. AVIATR is going to just fly straight into Titan's atmosphere without any engine burns at all. Just like Mars Pathfinder, or Mars Phoenix, or the MER rovers. Moreover Titan's atmosphere is so light and fluffy that we'll have very low heat loads and accelerations on entry -- 5 times easier than the easiest Mars entry. This is why it's possible to get to Titan on a Discovery budget. If we launch a Discovery or New Frontiers class Titan mission every 5 years or so, we'll be in a great position to do amazing and sustainable science, on a budget that might actually get approved, and on a timescale over which we'll still be alive to care! - Jason W. Barnes |
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