Europa Selected As Target of Next Flagship Mission 168
volcanopele writes "NASA and the European Space Agency announced today that they have selected the Europa/Jupiter System Mission as the next large mission to the outer solar system. For the last year, the Europa mission has been in competition with a proposal to send a mission to Saturn's moon Titan, as reported on Slashdot earlier. The Europa Mission includes two orbiters: one developed by NASA to orbit the icy moon Europa and another developed by ESA to orbit the solar system's largest moon, Ganymede. Both orbiters would spend up to 2.5 years in orbit around Jupiter before settling into orbit around their respective targets, studying Jupiter's satellites, rings, and of course the planet itself. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020 and arrive at Jupiter in 2025 and 2026."
Re:awww no landing? (Score:5, Informative)
The probe will have a radar that will at least be able to characterize the ice and the ocean beneath it. As well as a number of other instruments. There is a bunch of information on this mission at this link: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/doc.cfm?fobjectid=44038
Re:awww no landing? (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly, an orbiter is needed to determine the thickness of the ice shell, which is important if you want to access the ocean. Designing a mission that needs to dig down through 2-5 km of ice is quite a bit different than digging through 20-30km. Plus, an orbiter might be able to find areas where the shell is thinner, further helping later lander developers pick a landing site.
Re:Eleven Years? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eleven Years? (Score:5, Informative)
IAARS (I am a rocket scientist), and I am sad to say that 11 years is actually pretty fast for this type of mission. Jupiter has been visited before, certainly, but generally we only swing through. Just the radiation (which is extreme) is a major engineering problem. Standard electronics simply do not function in that high a radiation environment, so a lot of custom ICs and such are required. Just maintaining data on the hard drive is difficult!
Jupiter is also hugely difficult in terms of design because solar arrays generally don't provide enough power that far out, so RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) are generally the preferred option for the outer solar system. If I recall correctly, we launched our last RTG in stock on Cassini, and the US hasn't been building any more, mainly because of public concern about "nuclear power in space and there an apocalypse."
There are a host of other problems, of course. The bottom line is that even in LEO there is no mass production system, except perhaps for a single constellation like GPS. Every mission is very different, and every mission has different objectives, environments, and everything else. It is so expensive to get into space that there is no slack in any of the metrics for the inefficiencies that come with mass production of a given piece of space hardware. That goes doubly so for outer solar system missions.
The industry and academia have been talking for years about building common buses and things, and some companies do sell components and even the bus (the core of the S/C, sans instruments), etc, but it still hasn't really been realized for LEO. It will probably never be realized for outer planet missions because the instruments are exceptionally complex and the environment incredibly challenging.
Re:Eleven Years? (Score:5, Informative)
IANARS, but I've read many Wikipedia articles about the earlier NASA and USSR probes to Mecury, Venus, etc. It seems to me that those missions were faster (or at least no slower) than 11 years in planning, and there were a lot more of them. And that was way back before they had ICs like we have now.
And for mass production, I really don't see why certain parts can't be modularized. The problem of sending a probe to orbit a distant moon is the same whether it's Titan or Europa or Charon. Some details will be different, which is why you'd want modularization, so you can put some different instruments on the different probes to suit its particular mission requirements, but the bulk of the craft should be the same.
From Wikipedia's page on the Mariner program for instance: "All Mariner spacecraft were based on a hexagonal or octagonal "bus", which housed all of the electronics, and to which all components were attached, such as antennae, cameras, propulsion, and power sources." This was back in 1962, before ICs. The page doesn't say, but I'm pretty sure they didn't start the Mariner program in 1951.
There were 10 Mariner probes in all, with 7 being successful, launched over 10 years, all using the same basic parts and chassis. Mariners 11 and 12 turned into the Voyager probes, meaning those also benefited from the Mariner design and probably shared a lot of parts.
The industry and academia have been talking for years about building common buses and things, and some companies do sell components and even the bus (the core of the S/C, sans instruments), etc, but it still hasn't really been realized for LEO. It will probably never be realized for outer planet missions because the instruments are exceptionally complex and the environment incredibly challenging.
So NASA was able to design and successfully produce a common bus and chassis for 10+ years' worth of Mariner probes, back in 1962, but they can't do it now in 2009, almost 50 years later? Something about that doesn't seem right to me.
The key thing to keep in mind here is MONEY.
NASA was spending a lot more money in the 60s and into the 70s than they are now.
The reason it takes so long is that they're trying to keep costs down. The crash programs of the 60s were very expensive in comparison to more recent science probe missions.
Mariner 1-10 cost $554 Million
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=MARIN1
Which comes out to roughly $3.75 Billion adjusting 1962->2007 dollars for inflation.
Voyager's total cost was $865 Million
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/didyouknow.html
Which adjusted for inflation 1972->2007 is roughly $4.2 Billion.
The Viking missions cost $935 Million in 1974 dollars, translating to $3.9 Billion in 2007 dollars.
http://solarviews.com/history/SP-4212/ch8-6.html
For comparison, Mars Pathfinder cost $150 Million in 1997 dollars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Pathfinder
Mars Phoenix Mission was around $420 Million
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/26/america/mars.php
The overriding them here is that we're spending much less money on this kind of thing that we used to, so the brute force method doesnt work as well.
Can you imagine NASA spending 1/5th of it's annual budget on a deep space probe at this point in history? I cant.
I also would argue strongly against the assertion that mass production of space probes is a good idea. The instruments on these craft are mostly one-offs and must be rigorously qualified. Mass production makes sense when you need something in numbers. It doesnt really make sense to make a large number of identical probes when unique probes that must probes that must flawlessly perform a specific task under harsh conditions are what is required.
Anyway, I just think it's important to keep the numbers in perspective here. We're not spending money on science like we used to. Like not even close.
Anybody but me horribly disappointd by the choice? (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, come on. The Titan mission had an nuclear sterling engine powered orbiter that was going to fly through the plumes of Enceladus with special equipment to study, was going to drop a floating lander with an illuminated video camera into a known Titan sea that could look for floating matter, waves, and detect prebiotic and even biochemistry going on in the liquid, and a Montgolfier nuclear-hot-air-balloon that would study the organic chemistry going on in the atmosphere, make detailed maps of the surface (studyin things like cryovolcanoes and alluvial channels), and after the initial mission completed, likely make low passes right over the surface.
How could they pick this really unimpressive Europa mission over that? Aaargh!
Re:glacial pace (Score:4, Informative)
Not as much as you might think. While development does run up a hefty bill, assembly does too because of the enormous amount of testing, verification, and QA involved in actually building the components and then assembling them into a spacecraft. Actually operating the probes runs up a hefty bill too - and one with near zero economies of scale.
Why? For most science goals, you'll get the same amount of science from 10 probes as you would from one - you'll just get it earlier and pay a hell of a lot more to do so. You won't actually get more science.
Re:Eleven Years? (Score:4, Informative)
"The basics don't change. You need a vehicle to deliver a probe."
Yup, its commonly called "spacecraft bus" and its indeed commonly reused design for comsats but also for some planetary orbiters. ESA Mars Express and Venus Express shared a common bus and a few other pieces for instance.
However there are limits on how far you can take the commonality. For inner solar system, moderately-sized solar array works as a power system, for outer solar system it doesnt. Cooling requirements change with the distance from the sun, radiation environments change etc.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Informative)
European Space Agency picks the planetoid named after Europe? Who didn't see this coming?
You may be joking, but actually the Europeans chose a planet named after a pretty girl. So, as you say, who didn't see this coming? (Europa's the one that Jupiter came to in the form of a bull. Europe's named after her, not the other way around).
-Gareth