The First Europa Lander, What can be done first, cheapest & best? |
The First Europa Lander, What can be done first, cheapest & best? |
Jan 5 2010, 10:03 PM
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#121
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
There's more to radiation shielding than x-rays and gamma rays. In fact, I'd wager the primary damaging mechanism of Jupiter's radiation belts is directly via charged particles trapped in the belts (not secondary photons they produce when braking) and secondary particles. A low-Z material would be better suited for slowing down those suckers. In that vein it doesn't strike me as odd titanium would be used. In the end, it's always a tradeoff between different characteristics like primary absorption cross-section, secondary radiation production, etc.
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Jan 5 2010, 10:16 PM
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#122
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Low-Z also means low weight. Ti's got a number of excellent, complementary properties.
-------------------- 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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Jan 5 2010, 10:24 PM
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#123
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Director of Galilean Photography Group: Members Posts: 896 Joined: 15-July 04 From: Austin, TX Member No.: 93 |
I'll bet these guys have some good pointers on choosing radiation tolerant electronics
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/14...rd06_hobson.pdf -------------------- Space Enthusiast Richard Hendricks
-- "The engineers, as usual, made a tremendous fuss. Again as usual, they did the job in half the time they had dismissed as being absolutely impossible." --Rescue Party, Arthur C Clarke Mother Nature is the final inspector of all quality. |
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Jan 5 2010, 10:29 PM
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#124
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
Which is a very fair point - casual scanning of the usual sources didn't yield anything that indicated Titanium was often used for radiation shielding but that's not a surprise - most of the tech\materials stuff that crop up here tends to be in the "hard to find on google" category and I resisted the temptation to dig into the NTRS - anytime I do that months seem to disappear.
I was just looking at Doug's other point - the 1x1x0.8m safe masses 130kg - if that was _just_ titanium it would only be about 5.5mm thick plate. Making things out of solid metal, even a fairly low density one like Titanium, pushes total mass up awfully quickly. |
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Jan 5 2010, 10:33 PM
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#125
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/files/Y-McAlpine-...s%20Learned.pdf - big pdf containing a flash based presentation from http://opfm.jpl.nasa.gov/europajupitersyst...umentresources/ - they talk all about it.
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Jan 5 2010, 11:28 PM
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#126
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
Ah no, I've been sucked in - see you guys sometime in February. At least I've found the high-Z vs low-Z discussion points and why high-Z has some particularly bad downsides for Juno which seems to explain the choice of Titanium rather than the Tungsten\Tungsten Copper that crops up in the bits I've found so far.
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Dec 10 2011, 12:34 AM
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#127
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Member Group: Members Posts: 311 Joined: 31-August 05 From: Florida & Texas, USA Member No.: 482 |
JEO (Jupiter Europa Orbiter) launch in 2020 land in 2026! let's light this candle!
"NASA is considering dropping two robotic landers on the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa..." http://news.yahoo.com/jupiters-moon-europa...-212201869.html |
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Dec 10 2011, 03:33 AM
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#128
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2173 Joined: 28-December 04 From: Florida, USA Member No.: 132 |
let's light this candle! I take it this is a vote for an orbiter mission over a lander mission. While the lander mission is exciting, the much longer lived and broader ( multiple moon flybys) orbiter mission is more interesting and will provide plenty of excitement in its own right. |
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Dec 10 2011, 07:56 AM
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#129
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Member Group: Members Posts: 813 Joined: 8-February 04 From: Arabia Terra Member No.: 12 |
Agreed that a broad reconnaissance would be preferable. But a short lived lander with a similar mission scope to MSL might well be able to find enough through detailed in-situ analysis as to make the case for a super-duper flagship very strong indeed, whereas an orbital only mission might merely find suggestive/ambiguous evidence.
Might being the operative word of course... |
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Dec 10 2011, 09:31 AM
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#130
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
the problem is: without an orbital reconnaissance you don't even know what are the most suitable sites where to land and make in situ analyses
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Dec 10 2011, 01:15 PM
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#131
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Member Group: Members Posts: 293 Joined: 29-August 06 From: Columbia, MD Member No.: 1083 |
The bigger problem right now, Paolo, is there's no money for this unless a Europa lander can be proposed for a Discovery mission.
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Aug 8 2013, 07:46 AM
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#132
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Member Group: Members Posts: 241 Joined: 16-May 06 From: Geneva, Switzerland Member No.: 773 |
NASA Discusses Future Robotic Lander Mission To Europa
http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112917...-lander-080713/ The paper by Pappalardo et al. is published in Astrobiology Journal: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2013.1003 Best Regards, Marc. |
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