[X] My Assistant

[vjkane]

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/march_08_meeting/agenda.html

LOTS of interesting material here. Some highlights that interested me:

Cassini extended-extended mission (XXM) could last 7 years and end with a series of very close (10,000's km) polar orbits through the D ring gap to enable close in gravity and magnetometer mapping a la Juno

Argo proposal would be a New Horizon's class fly by of a Trojan, Saturn, Neptune/Triton, and one or more KBOs for ~$800M (but requires radioactive power source, so would seem to be out of contention for next New Frontiers)

Joint Jupiter mission design. NASA supplied Europa orbiter now required to conduct Jupiter system science including up to 4 Io flybys. To fit within the $2.1B cap (with 33% margin), Europa orbit would be reduced to 60 days and several instruments from the Flagship proposal would be dropped including the narrow angle camera)

Titan mission. Aerocapture no longer allowed, so craft would enter Saturn orbit first. Potentially allows new Enceladus observations. (Editorial note: Presentation was long on concepts, short on specifics. If this is an indication of the maturity of the mission concept, this does not bode well. I hope that this is only the style of presentation chosen by the presenter). Nature of ESA in situ probe(s) to be decided.

ESA Cosmic Vision outer planet mission. ESA is considering three missions for the next cosmic vision mission: an outer planets joint mission with NASA (Jupiter or Titan/Saturn), XEUS (X-ray observatory), or LISA (gravity wave observatory). Down select to two of the three end of '09, final single mission selected in 2011.

Radioisotope power. Lots of technical update, but a gem in the backup, the ASRG (Sterling engine) mission concepts being studied in more detail than I've seen elsewhere:

Moon polar rover (2 concepts)
Titan boat(!)
Io observer
Trojan lander
Comet lander
Comet coma rendezvou sample return
Mars lander drill ("a tour through Martian history")
Venus balloons (2)

[djellison]

Again - you're talking as if ESA's going to write a big fat cheque to NASA. That's not how it can work - politically, that's an unacceptable thing to do. You do things like 'we'll do the launch vehicle, if we can have two instruments onboard' or 'you do the orbiter, we'll do the lander' but not ' here's a billion dollars, can we have in please?'

Doug