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AVIATR - Titan Airplane Mission Concept, Proposed unmanned aerial exploration of Titan
Juramike
post Apr 16 2010, 12:20 AM
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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


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Some higher resolution images available at my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31678681@N07/
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algorimancer
post Jun 23 2010, 01:30 PM
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I'm really bothered by the very low (2 Gb) projected data return. This just doesn't sound like a lot of return for a billion dollar investment. Even with compression, 2 Gb doesn't add up to a lot of images (try going on vacation with only a 2 Gb flash card for your digicam), and this mission has the potential to explore much of Titan. Also, the 30 cm/pixel maximum resolution of the surface is on par with what I would expect from an orbiter, not an aircraft. I'd be reasonably happy with 3 mm per pixel (presumably associated with occasional low passes over targets of interest), and I'd like to see data return increased by at least a factor of 10, preferably 100. Possibly the greater data return might be achieved by storing much of the data until near end of mission, then achieving an intact landing and then leisurely transmitting the remainder over a period of months or years; I could even envision adding a very lightweight parabolic antenna to be deployed post-landing to accelerate data return.
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Jason W Barnes
post Jun 28 2010, 04:07 AM
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QUOTE (algorimancer @ Jun 23 2010, 06:30 AM) *
I'm really bothered by the very low (2 Gb) projected data return. This just doesn't sound like a lot of return for a billion dollar investment.


That should be 2 gigabytes (GB) and not 2 gigabits as written.

While AVIATR certainly is not going to be like MRO blasting back terabytes and terabytes of data, let me take this opportunity to suggest that data is not knowledge. Put another way, more bits does not always mean more science.

At Mars there's been 40 years of exploration. In order to make new scientific discoveries from a orbiter taking pictures, you need to do more and better than the missions that have gone before you. Because HiRISE is following on a very capable, very successful imager on MGS, it needed to do better in order be able to do things that MOC was unable to do. In the planetary exploration business, the general rule of thumb is that you need to do about 10 times better than the previous mission in order to be compelling enough to fly. HiRISE's pixel scale is 3 times better than MOC, its swath width at least 5 times wider, and it can send back more images due to the greater bandwidth available on MRO. Hence it was deemed a compelling investigation.

Cassini's RADAR has a best pixel scale of about 300 meters per pixel. Since pixel scale is not resolution, the actual resolution of the RADAR images is more like 750 - 1000 meters due to inherent speckle noise in the RADAR data. The best VIMS data are 250 meters per pixel, but those noodles are only 13 pixels across. AVIATR would do 1000 times better than these in terms of spatial resolution.

A better comparison for AVIATR would be Huygens. Huygens returned mosaics from around its landing site of varying resolution. Obviously the picture from the surface had spatial resolution that we can't match from an airplane! But our image mosaics from sites of interest will resemble Huygens', but with better control, higher spatial resolution where desired, and better signal-to-noise since we're imaging in the infrared.

If you think that 2GB is too little for a mission, then would you fly a mission that would return a total of just 60 MB of data? That's all that we got from Huygens. AVIATR would return 30 times the total data that we got from from Huygens. The reason that 2GB is enough isn't because of the quantity of data -- its that we'll be returning images that can't be obtained any other way. AVIATR will have a huge science and exploration impact because we're looking where nobody's looked before.

It's not the number of bits that you have. Its how you use them wink.gif

- Jason W. Barnes
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rlorenz
post Jul 11 2010, 02:45 PM
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QUOTE (Jason W Barnes @ Jun 27 2010, 11:07 PM) *
Cassini's RADAR has a best pixel scale of about 300 meters per pixel. Since pixel scale is not resolution, the actual resolution of the RADAR images is more like 750 - 1000 meters due to inherent speckle noise in the RADAR data. The best VIMS data are 250 meters per pixel, but those noodles are only 13 pixels across. AVIATR would do 1000 times better than these in terms of spatial resolution.


Hoi! mad.gif Misrepresentations like that will get you kicked from the team, pal.

The archive pixel scale (oversampled) is 175m/pixel. The formal range and azimuth resolutions vary throughout
a flyby, but are typically 300m (sometimes less) at closest approach - these resolution histories per flyby, and all
the other radar-voodoo parameters such as prf, bandwidth etc. are documented in the
sequence design memos (in the 'extras' directory on the PDS archive). Resolution (and thermal noise) are
separate consideration from speckle noise, which is a function of the number of looks.

Whether you consider the 'useful' resolution to be the same as the real resolution depends
on the application; some tasks require higher signal-to-noise than others. This is also true for VIMS data, which
does not always have the signal-to-noise to do what you'd like to do (and will be for AVIATR).
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Posts in this topic
- Juramike   AVIATR - Titan Airplane Mission Concept   Apr 16 2010, 12:20 AM
- - Juramike   This is an artist's impression of the AVIATR a...   Apr 16 2010, 12:23 AM
- - nprev   ...niiiiiiiice!!!! Sweet image, Mi...   Apr 16 2010, 12:33 AM
|- - vjkane   Also check out http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/2...   Apr 16 2010, 06:08 AM
- - Juramike   Image showing the proposed AVIATR Titan airplane f...   Apr 20 2010, 03:14 AM
- - Juramike   Recent video showing NASA's Global Hawk UAV re...   Apr 30 2010, 01:12 PM
- - Juramike   Smithsonian Air and Space article on Titan AVIATR ...   May 20 2010, 05:35 PM
- - Juramike   Video of Jason Barnes presenting the AVIATR missio...   Jun 13 2010, 03:32 AM
- - Juramike   Future Planetary Exploration blog entry on AVIATR ...   Jun 17 2010, 01:44 PM
- - algorimancer   I'm really bothered by the very low (2 Gb) pro...   Jun 23 2010, 01:30 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (algorimancer @ Jun 23 2010, 06:30 ...   Jun 28 2010, 03:51 AM
||- - algorimancer   QUOTE (Jason W Barnes @ Jun 27 2010, 10:5...   Jun 28 2010, 05:45 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (algorimancer @ Jun 23 2010, 06:30 ...   Jun 28 2010, 04:07 AM
|- - rlorenz   QUOTE (Jason W Barnes @ Jun 27 2010, 11:0...   Jul 11 2010, 02:45 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (rlorenz @ Jul 11 2010, 07:45 AM) H...   Jul 12 2010, 01:29 AM
|- - rlorenz   QUOTE (Jason W Barnes @ Jul 11 2010, 09:2...   Jul 12 2010, 12:20 PM
- - djellison   You're not going to get 30cm resolution from o...   Jun 23 2010, 04:16 PM
|- - Drkskywxlt   QUOTE (djellison @ Jun 23 2010, 11:16 AM)...   Jun 23 2010, 05:08 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (djellison @ Jun 23 2010, 09:16 AM)...   Jun 28 2010, 04:23 AM
- - stevesliva   Note that the figure is two gigabytes, and calling...   Jun 23 2010, 04:52 PM
- - djellison   I was going from http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ (b...   Jun 23 2010, 06:00 PM
|- - Drkskywxlt   QUOTE (djellison @ Jun 23 2010, 01:00 PM)...   Jun 23 2010, 06:25 PM
- - djellison   The internet hates me.   Jun 23 2010, 06:27 PM
|- - algorimancer   Doug, my intent wasn't to suggest 30mm/pixel r...   Jun 23 2010, 08:18 PM
- - jekbradbury   It's certainly a shame the mass spectrometer c...   Jun 28 2010, 02:59 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (jekbradbury @ Jun 28 2010, 07:59 A...   Jun 29 2010, 10:15 PM
- - Juramike   AVIATR image posted in Planetaria blog: http://we...   Jun 30 2010, 04:54 PM
- - Drkskywxlt   Jason (or anybody in the know) -- What is the exp...   Jun 30 2010, 05:35 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (Drkskywxlt @ Jun 30 2010, 10:35 AM...   Jul 1 2010, 08:27 PM
- - Jason W Barnes   Another point of comparison for missions' data...   Jul 9 2010, 08:30 AM
- - Greg Hullender   Forgive my ignorance, but shouldn't the resolu...   Jul 12 2010, 08:58 PM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Jul 12 2010, 01:5...   Jul 12 2010, 11:21 PM
|- - rlorenz   QUOTE (Jason W Barnes @ Jul 12 2010, 06:2...   Jul 13 2010, 12:46 AM
- - nprev   Speaking as a layperson, very interesting discussi...   Jul 13 2010, 01:00 AM
- - Greg Hullender   I think I see. Part of my confusion is that, in th...   Jul 13 2010, 02:33 PM
|- - vjkane   Properly speaking, resolution should be interprete...   Jul 13 2010, 09:08 PM
|- - rlorenz   QUOTE (Greg Hullender @ Jul 13 2010, 10:3...   Jul 14 2010, 04:54 PM
- - Juramike   Artists impression of AVIATR aeroshell and parachu...   Sep 7 2010, 03:58 AM
- - Juramike   Artistic impression of AVIATR Titan Airplane over ...   Sep 28 2010, 03:28 AM
- - Juramike   Reworked some of the AVIATR images with the latest...   Jun 10 2011, 01:11 AM
- - Juramike   Link to OPAG AVIATR mission presentation slides by...   Nov 19 2011, 06:16 PM
|- - ngunn   Some of your images there Mike? Don't be shy...   Nov 19 2011, 10:58 PM
- - nprev   Nice. I'd like to see this one fly (literally)...   Nov 20 2011, 12:23 AM
|- - Jason W Barnes   QUOTE (nprev @ Nov 19 2011, 06:23 PM) Onl...   Nov 24 2011, 01:39 AM
- - stevesliva   Uses an ASRG now. First nuclear plane. That...   Nov 20 2011, 03:53 AM
- - nprev   Ah! Thanks, Jason; feelin' warmer & fu...   Nov 24 2011, 01:59 AM
- - Mongo   I wonder if, instead of a virtually financially im...   Nov 26 2011, 02:35 AM
|- - Paolo   QUOTE (Mongo @ Nov 26 2011, 03:35 AM) I a...   Nov 26 2011, 05:07 PM
|- - vjkane   QUOTE (Mongo @ Nov 25 2011, 06:35 PM) I w...   Dec 24 2011, 09:46 PM
- - vjkane   Your idea of a number of lower cost missions has b...   Nov 26 2011, 05:00 PM
- - nprev   Guys, in the name of keeping this thread on topic,...   Nov 26 2011, 05:09 PM
- - Jason W Barnes   The AVIATR team has published a paper about the mi...   Dec 23 2011, 11:25 PM
|- - vjkane   Jason - Has your team every looked into including...   Dec 24 2011, 06:02 AM
- - stevesliva   Interesting that the Mongolfiere requires an MMRTG...   Dec 24 2011, 02:43 AM
- - Greg Hullender   We're looking far enough in the future that la...   Dec 25 2011, 07:13 PM
- - nprev   (sigh)...Guys, once again, please keep this thread...   Dec 25 2011, 10:26 PM
- - Juramike   AVIATR mission concept written up in Universe Toda...   Jan 3 2012, 02:06 AM
- - Juramike   space.com article: http://www.space.com/14191-tit...   Jan 11 2012, 04:48 PM
- - nprev   Great write-up & illustrations. Congrats, Jaso...   Jan 11 2012, 06:22 PM


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