Europa Small Lander Design Concepts

Biology

Scientific paper

Rate now

  [ 0.00 ] – not rated yet Voters 0   Comments 0

Details

5494 Instruments And Techniques, 6020 Ices, 6221 Europa

Scientific paper

Title: Europa Small Lander Design Concepts Authors: Wayne F. Zimmerman, James Shirley, Robert Carlson, Tom Rivellini, Mike Evans One of the primary goals of NASA's Outer Planets Program is to revisit the Jovian system. A new Europa Geophysical Explorer (EGE) Mission has been proposed and is under evaluation. There is in addition strong community interest in a surface science mission to Europa. A Europa Lander might be delivered to the Jovian system with the EGE orbiter. A Europa Astrobiology Lander (EAL) Mission has also been proposed; this would launch sometime after 2020. The primary science objectives for either of these would most likely include: Surface imaging (both microscopic and near-field), characterization of surface mechanical properties (temperature, hardness), assessment of surface and near-surface organic and inorganic chemistry (volatiles, mineralogy, and compounds), characterization of the radiation environment (total dose and particles), characterization of the planetary seismicity, and the measurement of Europa's magnetic field. The biggest challenges associated with getting to the surface and surviving to perform science investigations revolve around the difficulty of landing on an airless body, the ubiquitous extreme topography, the harsh radiation environment, and the extreme cold. This presentation reviews some the recent design work on drop-off probes, also called "hard landers". Hard lander designs have been developed for a range of science payload delivery systems spanning small impactors to multiple science pods tethered to a central hub. In addition to developing designs for these various payload delivery systems, significant work has been done in weighing the relative merits of standard power systems (i.e., batteries) against radioisotope power systems. A summary of the power option accommodation benefits and issues will be presented. This work was performed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract from NASA,

No associations

LandOfFree

Say what you really think

Search LandOfFree.com for scientists and scientific papers. Rate them and share your experience with other people.

Rating

Europa Small Lander Design Concepts does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Europa Small Lander Design Concepts, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Europa Small Lander Design Concepts will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

     

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-751304

  Search
All data on this website is collected from public sources. Our data reflects the most accurate information available at the time of publication.