Suggestions - Discovery, New Frontiers, Flagship Missions, What Are Your Ideas? Options

[PhilHorzempa]

Perhaps most of us will never be a PI on one of NASA's Discovery, New Frontiers
or Flagship missions. However, let's not have that stop us, the UMSF community
from suggesting, and describing, mission concepts that have been rattling around
in our brains for some time. I'll start the ball rolling.

My fantasy mission (Discovery or NF class?) would be the Jupiter Flyer 1. This
would be an unmanned airplane, named after the Wrights' first airplane, that
would fly through the atmosphere of Jupiter. Its exterior would be covered
with cameras, showing views in all directions as it glided through the atmosphere
looking for thermals.

I know that most talk of Jupiter probes concerns deep atmospheric probes,
such as the one on the Galileo mission. However, I want to see photos of
towering cumulo-nimbus clouds, not just streams of numbers on P, T and
composition.

That's it in a nutshell. Are there any more takers?


Another Phil

[monitorlizard]

Since neither money nor realistic chance of approval are limiting factors, my dream mission would be to launch essentially a Hubble Telescope with ion propulsion (preferably nuclear-powered) out of the solar system. With that kind of resolving power, it need fly only a few tens of millions of kilometers from an object to get better than Earth-based resolution of it. Bristling with state-of-the-art instruments, it would return data on hundreds of objects ranging from asteroids to Kuiper Belt objects. One or two close flybys would be mandatory, of course, perhaps Jupiter and something in the Kuiper Belt. Five million km or less should qualify as a close flyby for even hundred meter-class objects. With long life, a Jupiter gravity assist, and ion propusion, perhaps we could even study objects in the Oort Cloud near mission end.

On the more realistic side, I'd sure like to see the DSN speed up deployment of the small antenna arrays for improved deep space communications.

[tedstryk]

Sounds like agreat list. I would add a Venus mission (or Venus missions). Some rovers and balloons, and a radar orbiter that would make higher resolution maps and map selected area at MOC/HIRISE resolution. I would also have infrared cameras designed to best take advantage of atmospheric windows to study the surface and look for hotspots.

Once elected president, I will ensure that the following flagship/flagship+ class missions are rammed through Congress:

1. The Io Volcanic Observer: This mission would conduct 45+ flybys of everyone's favorite moon, conducting remote sensing observations as well deploying a network of penetrators with seismographs to study the distribution of active faults in Io's crust. This mission would orbit Jupiter and flyby Io in order to increase the length of the mission and lower the cost of the mission. The surface would be mapped at 125 m/pixel with higher resolution (< 50 m/pixel) over a significant portion of the surface. this mission would be designed to last at least 2 years in order to study time-variable phenomena at Io and in the rest of the Jupiter system.
2. Titan Orbiter/Zepplin: This would be a Titan orbital mission designed to map the surface using a high-resolution, 2-micron camera. The surface would be mapped a resolution of 200 m/pixel. The mission would also include a radar-mapper and altimetry, to complete the radar mapping conducted by Cassini. A piggy-back zepplin would explore Titan from an altitude of 10 km. The blimp would allow for much higher resolution observations of the surface, and direct sampling and analysis of surface materials (through decendable gondola). The blimp mission would last 45 days; the orbiter 1 to 2 years.
3. Neptune Orbiter+Triton lander: Cassini-class mission at Neptune with a Triton rover. The rover would be designed to explore Triton south polar region and would investigate the nature of the plumes. Due to the time -difference, the rover would have to be capable of autonomous investigation. The orbiter would be used to first search for a landing site, then used to investigate Neptune, Triton, and its system of rings and small moons. An end of mission scenario of landing on Proteus possible.
4. The Asteroid version of CONTOUR: Like CONTOUR, this Discovery-class mission would flyby a series of asteroids, examining the chemical makeup and geologic histories. At least 10 asteroids would be encountered from a wide variety of types. Such a mission would greatly expand out knowledge of asteroids by greatly increasing the number explored upclose.

[David]

My lonely vote goes for a Herschel mission -- basically, a Cassini for the planet that dare not speak its name.

[tasp]

I realize this would be fraught with both political and $$$ peril, but a series of craft with a standardized design for close in observations of Europa, Enceladus, Iapetus and Triton would be my pick.

A close runner up would be a pair of craft, designed for long term study of Uranus and Neptune.



Comment for the gas giant entry probe post above:

When Voyager II photographed the shadows of clouds rising up out of the Neptunian atmosphere near the terminator, I imagined being there and looking up at those towering cloud formations, an atmospheric probe of Neptune would at least have that to look at . . . . .

[ljk4-1]

My lonely vote goes for a Herschel mission -- basically, a Cassini for the planet that dare not speak its name.

Just do what the audiovisual news media did when Voyager 2 flew by that
planet in 1986: They made the letter a in the name a short vowel, rather
than the usual long one. Doesn't sound quite as "cheeky" as a result.

Won't stop the preteens who think they're being oh-so-clever from saying
it the other way over and over, though.

And most importantly - the planet doesn't care what we call it, as it has its
own name but isn't telling anybody.

[Mariner9]

Wish list, hmmmmmmmm..............

I'll try to keep it short, but no promises.

Discovery:
- Venus multiprobe: several descent probes designed to float down as slowly as possible in the final descent phase. Taking photographic panoramas of the surface from low altitude (say 1000 meters) as they are pushed along by Venus' somewhat slow surface level winds.

New Fronteirs:
- Io observer. I've always wanted the mission Volcanopele mentioned. Multiple flybys of Io, taking thousands of images (and lots of color this time) of the surface, along with lots of targeted "plume sniffing" - measuring the dust and gas as the probe flys through different plumes. As a minor side benefit, throw in some Amalthea and Thebe flybys, and Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto as practical.
- New Horizons 2 and 3 - Uranus and Neptune flybys with Pluto probe clones, followed by suitable Kuiper Belt targets.
- direct entry Titan probe. Balloon probe, designed to drift as far as possible taking surface images and remote sensing over a variety of terrain. It is begining to look like there will be a lot more questions than answers about Titan's surface topography after the Cassini mission, and just getting a close look at a 500-600 KM swath of the surface could answer a lot of questions.

Flagship:
- Europa Orbiter
- Enceladus Orbiter with multiple penetrator class landers. And as long as we are going to Enceladus, give me a few close flybys of Dione, Tethys and Mimas before finally settling into final orbit. Yeah, I know you don't get any gravity assists from those small bodies, but I want more pics of the Dione ice cliffs. Preferably at a bit higher than the avearage 100 m resolution that we seemed to get from Cassini.

[ljk4-1]

How about landing one rover on the top of Olympus Mons and another
at the bottom of Valleris Mariners. Imagine the views from those locations.

Or a balloon or airplane probe to those places - whatever works best.

[djellison]

MER EDL wouldn't work at the altitiude of Oly Mons

Doug

[ljk4-1]

MER EDL wouldn't work at the altitiude of Oly Mons

Doug

I figured they'd need retrorockets for those places, if we are talking
just a lander or rover.

I still think they'd be worth it for the science and the imagery.

[djellison]

Val Mer would be OK - it was after all one of the candidate MER sites - but Oly Mons is actually quite a boring place. The dome itself is only a few degrees of slope, for several hundred miles. You couldn't target near the Caldera really - which WOULD be interesting, and the end of the dome is a cliff, which again you couldn't target for Hartmann writes about it very well in the totally fantastic 'Explorers Guide to Mars'

Doug

[dvandorn]

I think an engineering demonstration might be in order for a Discovery or New Frontiers mission, depending on its overall cost...

We want to place seismometers on a lot of bodies out there via penetrators, right? Well, why not practice and demonstrate the technology fairly close to home?

Send a small fleet of penetrators to the Moon, each equippped with a seismometer. This way, you demonstrate the ability to emplace such devices on airless (or nearly airless) worlds, *and* you get a lunar seismometer network out of it.

-the other Doug

[David]

and the end of the dome is a cliff, which again you couldn't target for

What's the slope of the cliff, though? Olympus Mons is so huge that these structures probably don't look anything like they do from orbit when you're on the surface. I'd bet that there's no place you can stand on Mars where you could actuallly see Olympus Mons looking like a mountain -- or indeed like a single structure at all.

[helvick]

I'd bet that there's no place you can stand on Mars where you could actuallly see Olympus Mons looking like a mountain -- or indeed like a single structure at all.

Yep - it's probably too big and most of the slopes are pretty gentle (5-10%). However if the air quality was outstandingly clear then the summit could be visible from a distance of ~400km - it wouldn't look like a mountain but the fact that the horizon was 400km away would be amazingly weird.

[Bob Shaw]

Perverse though it may sound, there's really *no* interesting geology on Olympus Mons. We really do already know as much about it (other than extreme sports enthusiasts) as anyone would ever need. It's the geological interfaces which teach us things, and 25km above the mean surface of Mars, perched on a shield volcano, is *not* a way to use a precious resource like a rover!

It's also likely to be almost impossible to drive over with a MER-sized vehicle, being just a series of 'fresh' lava flows.

Bob Shaw

[tglotch]

Perverse though it may sound, there's really *no* interesting geology on Olympus Mons. We really do already know as much about it (other than extreme sports enthusiasts) as anyone would ever need. It's the geological interfaces which teach us things, and 25km above the mean surface of Mars, perched on a shield volcano, is *not* a way to use a precious resource like a rover!

It's also likely to be almost impossible to drive over with a MER-sized vehicle, being just a series of 'fresh' lava flows.

Bob Shaw

One thing we don't know is the composition of the lava flows, due to the fact that Tharsis is one of the dustiest places on the planet (which would also make it hard to drive a rover). But, an interesting thing to know would be if the composition is more similar to the plagioclase-rich "TES Type 1" basalt or the more pyroxene- or olivine-rich SNCs.