March OPAG presentations available |
March OPAG presentations available |
Apr 8 2008, 09:37 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 706 Joined: 22-April 05 Member No.: 351 |
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/march_08_meeting/agenda.html
LOTS of interesting material here. Some highlights that interested me: Cassini extended-extended mission (XXM) could last 7 years and end with a series of very close (10,000's km) polar orbits through the D ring gap to enable close in gravity and magnetometer mapping a la Juno Argo proposal would be a New Horizon's class fly by of a Trojan, Saturn, Neptune/Triton, and one or more KBOs for ~$800M (but requires radioactive power source, so would seem to be out of contention for next New Frontiers) Joint Jupiter mission design. NASA supplied Europa orbiter now required to conduct Jupiter system science including up to 4 Io flybys. To fit within the $2.1B cap (with 33% margin), Europa orbit would be reduced to 60 days and several instruments from the Flagship proposal would be dropped including the narrow angle camera) Titan mission. Aerocapture no longer allowed, so craft would enter Saturn orbit first. Potentially allows new Enceladus observations. (Editorial note: Presentation was long on concepts, short on specifics. If this is an indication of the maturity of the mission concept, this does not bode well. I hope that this is only the style of presentation chosen by the presenter). Nature of ESA in situ probe(s) to be decided. ESA Cosmic Vision outer planet mission. ESA is considering three missions for the next cosmic vision mission: an outer planets joint mission with NASA (Jupiter or Titan/Saturn), XEUS (X-ray observatory), or LISA (gravity wave observatory). Down select to two of the three end of '09, final single mission selected in 2011. Radioisotope power. Lots of technical update, but a gem in the backup, the ASRG (Sterling engine) mission concepts being studied in more detail than I've seen elsewhere: Moon polar rover (2 concepts) Titan boat(!) Io observer Trojan lander Comet lander Comet coma rendezvou sample return Mars lander drill ("a tour through Martian history") Venus balloons (2) -------------------- |
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Apr 19 2008, 06:00 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8783 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Well said. Realpolitik is what it is, and frankly when it comes to the comparatively extremely small investments that are made in UMSF, the immediate and long-term societial/technological ROIs are immense.
There's a lot of--usually sarcastic--focus on direct spin-offs, mostly because critics do not recognize (or comprehend?) this fact. Perhaps there's a heuristic to be derived here: The more difficult a technical problem is to solve, the more benefits from both solutions and alternative approaches--even if not adopted--can be harvested. Ideas often spring from previous ideas, which is probably why nobody's working on an improved version of the flint axe instead of proposals for new interplanetary spacecraft right now... -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Apr 19 2008, 07:18 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
I favour the Titan/Saturn mission because the mission elements would be more reliant on each other than the Europa/Jupiter mission. Remember the International Solar Polar mission? How easy it was for NASA to cancel its part and leave ESA with a single spacecraft. Compare to Cassini/Huygens, a spacecraft US politicians tried but failed to kill in the early 90s. Huygens saved Cassini from the fate of CRAF.
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