Solar Probe!

[CalliArcale]

<p>Lots of us remember the exciting and ambitious Fire & Ice program that, disappointingly, wound up cancelled.&nbsp; It consisted of Pluto/Kuiper Express, Solar Probe, and Europa Orbiter.&nbsp; A variation of the PKE misison is being flown by the New Horizons spacecraft.&nbsp; And now Solar Probe is back too.&nbsp; NASA has called on JHU-APL to develop the new Solar Probe mission.</p><p>The vehicle will have a nine-foot-wide, six-inch-thick sunshade partly based on MESSENGER's sunshade, and this will protect it as it flies to within 4.1 million miles of the Sun.&nbsp; It will experience solar heating 500 times greater than in Earth orbit.&nbsp; It will also be equipped with retractable solar arrays, which will generate power during most of each orbit but then be retracted behind the sunshade during perihelions.&nbsp; Solar Probe is expected to launch in 2015 and then spend seven years gradually reducing its orbit by means of seven Venus flybys.&nbsp; It will fly eight times closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft and have an unparallelled opportunity to observe the near-solar environment, directly measuring magnetic fields, plasma densities, radiation, etc.</p><p>Major kudos to the NASA officials who fought to get this mission back on the table.</p><p>JHU APL press release&nbsp;</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[shuttle_guy]

<p>This will be a really neat mission, too bad the Delta V requirement is so high. We need to get a VASIMR motor on it.</p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>This will be a really neat mission, too bad the Delta V requirement is so high. We need to get a VASIMR motor on it. <br /> Posted by shuttle_guy</DIV><br /></p><p>Well, at least the gravity assists are cheap -- except in terms of having to keep the mission team employed through the 7 year cruise phase before the science phase even begins.&nbsp; It's hard to stay patient, isn't it?&nbsp; ;-)&nbsp; I'm bad enough about MESSENGER. </p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>