Neptune Orbiter, Another proposed mission Options

[Rob Pinnegar]

This seems like a good place to start off the Uranus and Neptune forum: with the next ice-giants mission.

I will admit to not knowing a whole lot about the Neptune Orbiter With Probes (NOWP), other than the fact that it's in the planning stages, and a few other details I've gathered from Wikipedia and various other Internet sources. Anyone care to get this one going with a bit more information?

[tasp]

Just throwing out some ideas here:

Modify a follow on New Horizons craft to orbit Neptune. Take advantage of Neptune's huge Hill sphere by having the craft execute big, leisurely orbits of Neptune, perhaps keeping the orbital period around Neptune at ~6 months or so. The advantage of this is commonality with the current NH design, gather data during periapsis and transmit during the 5 months or so when your not near the planet. NH is apparently anticipated to be a long lived craft, having a follow on craft study Neptune for a significant portion of it's arc about the sun would be useful. The large orbit might also allow observations of the interesting apparent KBO style outie satellites. We can have a Triton pass every orbit and time the encounters to give us a close pass by an inner ring satellite and/or an outie too.

I'm still thinking having the craft start in either a prograde or retrograde orbit and then orbit shaping to the other is possible and useful in studying Neptune's magnetic field.