In part 1 we went over the challenge to plan a sample return mission from Saturn.
In this installment (sounds official doesn't it?) I'll discuss what we decided to study and return. Saturn is known primarily for its rings and moons. Probably one of the most famous probes to visit the planet was the Cassini Huygens probe. It's still checking out Saturn today. Doing our research we found studies from JPL and NASA talking about future missions and possible objectives.
Cassini set a high bar for science from Saturn. Future missions being considered involved landers on Saturn's moons or additional data collection from various locations around the Saturn system. We really weren't interested in duplicating Cassini and wanted to include a sample return component.
Then we discovered that on October 6, 2009 NASA's Spitzer space telescope discovered a new outer ring at Saturn. This massive outer ring that been described as the “dark” or “Phoebe” ring. Saturn’s moon Phoebe orbits within this ring. Although not officially designated yet, if it follows the naming convention it will eventually be known as Saturn’s “H” ring. The diagram below gives you an idea of how big this new ring might be.
We thought this was a good target for our mission. We could at least send back some analysis about this ring. Data from Cassini didn't even give us any clues about it. Plus we can design a spacecraft to collect some of this material and bring it back to earth.
Part 3 will discuss the spacecraft design (and for you CAD fans you will get to see 3D models of the spacecraft in part 3).
Bloggers note: I'm trying to keep these posts short and to the point to keep the reader's attention. If you have any questions or would like more information feel free to post a comment. We've put too much work into this project to just sit on a shelf somewhere ;)
2 comments:
"Plus we can design a spacecraft to collect some of this material and bring it back to earth."
Q1: Bring it back to earth? There is any "object" sent by humans over the Mars orbit ever recover back on Earth?
Q2: There are any theories which can predict how stable can be the planet’s systems of rings? Can be expected than after a calculable amount of time the matter which compose the rings accumulate in the lagrangian points and eventually transform into a (more or less) regular satellite?
Thanks for your questions.
A1: Our approach is to capture particles from the dark ring as swing around Saturn. We would not attempt any landings on the planets, moons, or rings. The gel in the capture device would retain particles from the dark ring.
A2: Not sure about those theories, but hopefully our sample return mission would help clarify ring formation techniques.
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