Uranus Orbiter, The other proposed ice-giant mission |
Uranus Orbiter, The other proposed ice-giant mission |
Nov 11 2005, 05:13 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 509 Joined: 2-July 05 From: Calgary, Alberta Member No.: 426 |
Since the Neptune Orbiter thread has started to veer into talking about a Uranus orbiter as well, it seemed like a good idea to start a topic for Uranus.
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Nov 15 2005, 07:31 PM
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Orbiting Ariel would be a remarkable ending to this mission -- especially given the assumptions I've been making until this month about the helplessness of a Uranus Orbiter. (I might as well say that Spilker told me that his own navigator for the Neptune Orbiter mission design took just a few days to reach a similar conclusion that a moon tour is perfectly feasible with a Uranus Orbiter; the only thing needed is experience with navigating a craft through a rapid-fire series of moon flybys, which Cassini has now given us. He didn't say anything about a finish-up at Ariel, though.)
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Nov 15 2005, 10:13 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2488 Joined: 17-April 05 From: Glasgow, Scotland, UK Member No.: 239 |
A long time ago (the early 1970s!), I suggested that there might be all sorts of odd effects around Uranus as a result of it's axial tilt - specifically, that at certain times of the Uranian year the relative velocities of both incoming spacecraft and meteorites, comets etc could be very much slower than expected (not so much a matter of traditional orbital dynamics as simply the summing of vectors). The end result might be a natural cache - as in Antarctica - of almost Kuiper Belt material, available for access in crater/canyon walls or by drilling on some of the icy moons. Or even interstellar material...
Bob Shaw -------------------- Remember: Time Flies like the wind - but Fruit Flies like bananas!
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