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How infeasible is a Kuiper Belt equivalent of Dawn
Tom Womack
post Nov 25 2008, 01:41 PM
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I presume that it is completely infeasible without a very powerful nuclear reactor and many years' production of ion engines to do anything remotely like Dawn in the Kuiper belt - the distances are just too long.

Is it in fact feasible with current technology even to get a probe into orbit around Haumea or Makemake? I'd suspect not, that the speed you need to get it out to the Kuiper belt in a lifetime is much too great to cancel down to orbital velocity.
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machi
post Feb 23 2010, 09:00 AM
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No. Some informations about this mission are in this paper and this is only paper which I found on net with some informations.
But I searched my personal archive and I have original paper about this mission (it's one of ESA ACT studies).
It was freely available on net, but now It's somewhere in ESA archives.
I don't know if I can send copy here, It's ESA copyrighted material.
But at least some informations about this study:

Pluto Orbiter Probe (POP):
Wet mass: 830 kg.
Dry mass: 510 kg.
Power: 4×GPHS-like RTG (MMRTG) (1.05 kW at Pluto).
Propulsion: 4×QinetiQ T5 ion engines with 270 kg of Xe.
Communication: X/Ka band. 380 bps to 35 meter ESA antenna (Ka band).
Instruments: Camera, near infrared spectrometer, X-ray spectrometer, radiation experiment, SAR, bolometer (20 kg).

Launch: XII.2016 (enhanced Ariane 5).
JGA: 2018.
Pluto orbit: VI.2034 (after 1 year spiral down phase).
Final orbit: Circular with a inclination 99°, altitude 1000 km, Charon visited on spiral-down phase.


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