Small Nuclear-powered Hot Air Balloons for the Exploration of the Deep Atmosphere of Uranus and Neptune

Details Small Nuclear-powered Hot Air Balloons for the Exploration of the Deep Atmosphere of Uranus and Neptune Small Nuclear-powered Hot Air Balloons for the Exploration of the Deep Atmosphere of Uranus and Neptune

Jan 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001iaop.work...87v&link_type=abstract

Forum on Innovative Approaches to Outer Planetary Exploration 2001-2020, p. 87

Computer Science

Numerical Analysis

Balloons, Planetary Atmospheres, Outer Planets Explorers, Space Exploration, Nuclear Electric Power Generation, Numerical Analysis, Buoyancy

Scientific paper

The Galileo probe gathered data in the Jovian atmosphere for about one hour before its destruction. For a wider perceptive on the atmospheres of the outer planets, multiple, long-lived observations platforms would be useful. In this paper we examine the basic physics of hot-air ballooning in a hydrogen atmosphere, using plutonium RTGs as a heat source. We find that such balloons are buoyant at a sufficiently great depth in these atmospheres, and derive equations for the balloon radius and mass of plutonium required as a function of atmospheric mass density and balloon material parameters. We solve for the buoyancy depth given the constraint that each probe may contain 1.0 kg of Pu, and find that the temperature at that depth is too great for conventional electronics (>70 C) for Jupiter and Saturn. However, the Pu mass constraint and the operating temperature constraint are consistent for Uranus and Neptune, and this concept may be applicable to those planets. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

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