Europa or Titan? Or other?

[CalliArcale]

Well, I for one would like to see people actually traveling to Ceres, but that's probably looking a wee bit too far ahead. Seriously, I very much look forward to Dawn's arrival at Ceres.

 

[EarthlingX]

Well, I for one would like to see people actually traveling to Ceres, but that's probably looking a wee bit too far ahead. Seriously, I very much look forward to Dawn's arrival at Ceres.

I only wish, it had a little better eyes .. am i off topic, again ?

 

[brandbll]

Question:

With Hyugens successfully landing on Titan and sending back data, has that experience given us a better idea of how to send a longer term lander/rover onto Titan, and if so has anyone just how long term we could send something there with current technology? I realize Hyugens wasn't really the main focus of the mission it went on, so i'm figuring that sort of determined what we could really do with it.

 

[nimbus]

You could probably find a lot of info in the unmannedspaceflight forum archives. Most recently, I've found a blog with some pretty cool details on a Titan airplane probe. I don't remember if it was linked to here.

 

[brandbll]

You could probably find a lot of info in the unmannedspaceflight forum archives. Most recently, I've found a blog with some pretty cool details on a Titan airplane probe. I don't remember if it was linked to here.

That's a really interesting proposal! It didn't give any estimate on how long it could operate for, but i like the idea that it can always operate on the sun side of the moon and can therefore constantly be transmitting data. There were two items though that were seemingly not addressed in the blog and article that is linked in the blog. One, they address atmospheric pressure and gravity, but they don't address wind speeds. I'm not sure about wind speeds on Titan but i would assume a plane could be much more suceptible to a failure caused by something like that than a balloon. And two, they didn't address deployment of the plane; which would seem to be the greatest obstacle to overcome IMO.

 

[montylc2001]

If I had my 'druthers we would be sending probes to ALL in question. However seeing as to the high intelligence demonstrated by our powers in command for funding (do i have to be specific?) we should concentrate on the Jovian system mainly on the premise of cost. Quite honestly, and at the risk of chapping some of my fellow comrades here, I feel we should scale back on our Mars explorations and concentrate on other missions. Not that I do not like Mars or feel it's not worth our attention, but we have volumes of information already that will keep researchers occupied for years. Besides, it would give the private sector a boost if they could offer fishing trips to Europa.

 

[SpaceTas]

If you follow the water: Enceladus is it. We have found geysers of water ice/liquid there. Low orbit passing through them, and a lander with chemical analysis, and a heat flow monitor.

NASA and ESA have already had a debate on Europa v Titan. Probably the orgial motivation for this thread. The conclusion was that science wise they were neck-n-neck but because the Europa orbiter had been studied longer it was closer to being ready. So there is joint Europa Ganymede mission; an orbiter each.

 

[EarthlingX]

Why not more ? Much more ?

Wiki : Cubesat

A CubeSat is a type of miniaturized satellite for space research that usually has a volume of exactly one liter (10 cm cube), weighs no more than one kilogram, and typically uses commercial off-the-shelf electronics components. Beginning in 1999, California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) and Stanford University developed the CubeSat specifications to help universities worldwide to perform space science and exploration.

In 2004, with their relatively small size, CubeSats could each be made and launched for an estimated $65,000 – $80,000 dollars.[1]

* [1] http://www.space.com/businesstechnology ... 40908.html

A CubeSat can be built for under $25,000, although they typically come in at the $30,000 to $40,000 price range - still a bargain. The "going-rate" per CubeSat launch is in the $40,000 range.

A company with lots of gear, as an example :
home : Clyde Space

They have some very easy interfacing options, like USB, I2C, and so on. Cute, and probably not terribly expensive - it's a standard computer junk, a bit rad-hardened, i guess, but there's a couple of rad-hardened ARM manufacturers, no biggie.

Drop 20, or 100, no need to be stingy, swarm the moons

Oh, and could a couple of hundred be used for asteroids ? Lab on a chip (Wiki) also comes to mind ..

http://www.cubesat.org/ - papers

 

[hansolo0]

In a related note, I saw on some science program the gist of which was that until they are 100% certain they won't contaminate an environment below a frozen lake they won't send a robo driller probe down it. They and an inventor had come up with one that was promising, and they are looking at drilling into lake vostok in antarctica(which is surmised to be similar to europa - frozen with thick ice for years with water at the bottom) but won't even do that because of contamination concerns to say nothing of building a probe that had one and sending it to europa. Frustrating to say the least.

There was another video on a recent ep 'this week in space' with miles o'brien I believe which is on http://www.spaceflightnow.com. On that clip they drilled thru somewhere with deep ice and weren't expecting to find anything and found a shrimp! The show can also be found on youtube!