[X] My Assistant

[pioneer]

I've heard about ideas for a future mission to Titan. I think the most feasible one is to use a balloon. Because Titan's atmosphere is more dense than Earth's, a balloon could easily float. It could also cover more ground than a rover or ground-based vehicle.

I don't think we should send a rover yet because, unlike Mars, we don't have detailed information of the surface on a global scale. For MER, we had MOC and laser altimeter data to determine a safe spot. Although we are gathering altimeter data from the RADAR and some images from SSI and VIMS, I don't think they are detailed enough to determine whether a landing area is safe enough for landing or accessible by a rover.

Also, I think the mission should go directly from cruise stage to descent and avoid orbital entry to Saturn or Titan. Over half of Cassini's weight at launch was due to fuel for SOI. If we eliminate the need for this, we reduce the mass and cost.

Of course, we would need RTGs to power the probe.

I think a mission like this is quite feasible and can be done with less than half the amount of Cassini.

[volcanopele]

For this I am assuming that Cassini will NOT enter Titan orbit in an extended mission due to lack of propellant.

I envision a two spacecraft mission. The first would be an orbiter that would go into Saturn orbit then use Titan flybys to put it into an orbit whose apoapsis is just beyond Titan orbit. From there it would go into titan orbit. The orbiter whould have the following instruments:

1) NIR-camera: we have seen from VIMS that the optical depth of Titan's atmosphere decreases with increasing wavelength. So at VIMS' max resolution of 2 km/pixel, VIMS can seen more features than ISS can at 2 km/pixel. So for the next mission, it is obvious that an imager with similar pixel scale as ISS but with the spectral range of the VIMS NIR channel would be appropriate.
2) Laser Altimeter: one of the keys in understanding the relationship between the bright and dark terrain is to map the elevation of the interaction. Do the shorelines represent a kind of "sea level" marker like on earth?
3) SAR radar (no question)

For the other probe, I would use somekind of blimp or dirigible (not necessarily because of the HGA issue). One requirement of a probe that would be below the haze would be mobility (a simple lander or even a rover would not be effective in this regard) in both latitude and longitude. So the motion of the probe must be controllable, either by the probe itself through some kind of autonavigation algorithm or from ground controllers). It must be capable of landing or send mini probes to investigate interesting surface features up close. The instruments for the blimp (or even helicopter):

1) a clone of the orbiters NIR-camera perhaps with additional filters in the visible
2) a mini-VIMS: with less atmosphere to deal with and a lamp, an instrument like this could do a wonderful job in identifying surface constintuents
3) various atmospheric instruments
4) some kind of surface science package that would be a mix between the Huygens SSP and the MER IDD with a raman spectrometer added in