Persephone Pluto Orbiter Options

[stevesliva]

From fall 2020 OPAG https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/opag2020fall/

Persephone:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/meetings/opag...Howett_6005.pdf

There is talk of extended missions out to 2079. Building cathedrals for our grandkids here...

[stevesliva]

Would be a worthwhile use of the space station to bolt two (or any multiple of 2) of these new improved reaction wheels to the outside, and have them apply opposite forces and stress them for a few years, starting as soon as they're ready. If they fail, could actually do PFA. Probably can't isolate them enough. Oh well.

We're headed for Chit-Chat on this one.

[HSchirmer]

Would be a worthwhile use of the space station to bolt two (or any multiple of 2) of these new improved reaction wheels to the outside, and have them apply opposite forces and stress them for a few years, starting as soon as they're ready. If they fail, could actually do PFA. Probably can't isolate them enough. Oh well.

We're headed for Chit-Chat on this one.

Eh, whether it's smart to use reaction wheels on a Persephone multi-year missions is on topic.

I like the "hard drives as cubesat reaction wheels" as a possible 2-for-1 (data storage AND attitude control)
Take a couple old hard drives, put in new test bearings, (metal, diamond coated metal, ceramic, magnetic) put them in a RAID array and run to failure while writing the test results to the disk.