[X] My Assistant

[ngunn]

With thanks to Van Kane at futureplanets for links to the very interesting white papers for the next decadal survey, here is one that caught my eye:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=...Wl6DEjXiZwrRDZg

Small but capable landers with enough power to talk directly to earth can be hurled into Titan's obliging atmosphere at interplanetary velocities and land safely without parachutes.

QUOTE:

Mission Architecture

A network mission could likely (depending on the ASRG/RTG provision) fit within the New Frontiers
budget envelope, in that 4 small landers could be delivered directly to Titan on a simple carrier from
interplanetary approach (somewhat reminiscent of the Pioneer Venus probes). The small semi-hard
landers would not need parachutes, legs nor sampling systems, and thus could be relatively simple and
inexpensive. In the Entry-Descent-and-Landing (EDL) context, a Titan network mission is considerably
easier than a corresponding Mars mission.

It will be recalled that the 1.3m diameter, 200kg Huygens probe, with a 1.3m parachute, hit the ground at
5 m/s and was unaffected by the 15g impact. A 10-50kg small station, with a Huygens-like 5cm foam
insulation layer, will encounter similar or lower impact speeds and loads without a parachute. The stations
might be simple DS-2 or Huygens-like capsules, or perhaps with simple self-righting petals like the
Russian Luna-9 or the Mars Pathfinder.

Communication, of course, would be direct-to-Earth. The key science goals can be met with modest
bandwidth (a Megabit per Titan day, or ~1 bps, is ample over year-long periods), compatible with low- or
medium-gain transmission to the DSN, especially if the bandwidth is leveraged by intelligent data
prioritization on the landers such as event-triggered sampling and data compression.

UNQUOTE

I have a queston regarding the range of arrival speed for which this could be done. Presumably when a very small payload is involved it is posible to send it on a much faster trajectory from Earth to its target than could be done for the likes of Cassini, should that be deemed worthwhile. I am wondering if Titan's atmosphere has an absolute maximum safe arrival speed?

[ngunn]

I dunno. That's about three times faster than New Horizons, but the small Titan landers under discussion would be an order of magnitude less massive.