NASA Europa Missions, projects and proposals for the 2020s |
NASA Europa Missions, projects and proposals for the 2020s |
Mar 5 2014, 12:53 AM
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Forum Contributor Group: Members Posts: 1374 Joined: 8-February 04 From: North East Florida, USA. Member No.: 11 |
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Mar 17 2014, 08:28 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 656 Joined: 20-April 05 From: League City, Texas Member No.: 285 |
Some years back I was contemplating the possibilities of very small & cheap spacecraft for deep space missions; communications was always the big stumbling block. Since I like playing Devil's Advocate, this led me to wonder: what if we don't need to worry about communication? Why not carry the data physically?
Envision something like a Cubesat with a basic telescope, solar arrays, and something like a tiny ion drive for attitude control and minimal course corrections, and coupled with a small computer and hardened flash drive (capable of surviving a high-speed reentry return to Earth). Envision a mission where you launch a dozen (or more) of these things towards Jupiter/Europa, with the spacecraft completely autonomous once launched. They loop past Europa on a close flyby of a region of interest, snap a few hundred images and store them on the flash drive, use Jupiter for a gravity assist and swing back towards Earth, eventually re-entering at a pre-specified longitude & latitude, and fall to the ground, probably transmitting an electronic ping (or sending a text message over the nearest cellular network). Someone just needs to pick them up and copy the images from the flash drive (or email them over a cellular network, no need to track it down), mission accomplished. Extending the concept, a simple conventional lander might be sent to Europa, autonomously land on the surface and collect seismic and other data, then later send burst transmissions of this data to a passing autonomous Cubesat vehicles making close flybys as above, which then deliver the data to Earth. All of this requires rather a lot of trust in autonomous navigation, but that's just a matter of software. In principal you could launch a hundred of these things for a fraction of the cost of a regular mission, with great redundancy. |
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Mar 17 2014, 09:31 PM
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
All of this requires rather a lot of trust in autonomous navigation, but that's just a matter of software. Navigation isn't a 'matter of software'. It's a matter of the huge, powerful and complex infrastructure of the DSN combined with comms onboard a spacecraft used as two way and indeed three-way links and regular Delta-DOR for accurate navigation. Your proposal would require quite extraordinarily accurate gravity assist for the return flight to Earth ( if the E-J-E free return trajectory is doable without significant propulsive maneuvers ) - that level of accuracy can't be coded away - it requires ground-in-the-loop hardware, comms etc. Moreover - name a spacecraft - any spacecraft - that flew as far as Jupiter and Back - without requiring human intervention due to safe modes, TCM's, etc etc. It's a non starter. |
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