Europa Ice Clipper.
CubeSats will find a role in planetary missions, but Europa is about as hard a target as you can pick for your first one. At the very basics, what instrument (~1 kg) are you going to fly that will tell us something interesting? How are you going to implement a radiation vault? I love the idea of CubeSats, but for nearby targets (NEOs, lunar) or a auxiliary instrument platforms for larger missions.
Newbie question--the radiation we're talking about here is basically like Van Allen Belt radiation around earth (mostly high energy/fast electrons and protons/light nuclei), just more intense, correct?
Quote from: jongoff on 01/06/2014 10:08 pmNewbie question--the radiation we're talking about here is basically like Van Allen Belt radiation around earth (mostly high energy/fast electrons and protons/light nuclei), just more intense, correct?Far more intense than the Van Allen belts and concentrated more in the ecliptic. The ions come primarily, I believe, from Io's erruptions.Intensity increases as you approach Jupiter until just a few 10Ks kilometers above the cloud tops where they drop in intensity. (Juno will sneak through this gap during its closest to avoid the worst of the radiation. Even so, the spacecraft has extensive shielding.) The radiation at Europa would be lethal to humans and will fry electronics without shielding or specialty high radiation electronics (the latter are expensive and in some cases not available).
Cubesats can be ready faster only because they're smaller and cheaper. The whole process of building them and picking a flight is just WAY easier because of that. So I don't take the claim that they can be ready faster as too outrageous. Yeah, no one has demonstrated an interplanetary cubesat, but what fundamentally would be the reason it couldn't be done?A big issue with cubesats is communication over interplanetary distances. Some sort of relay using a larger vehicle (like we do on Mars with landers and rovers) is a great way to overcome that.Anyway, the cubesat people have a huge advantage in nimbleness that may off-set their equally huge disadvantage of not demonstrating an interplanetary mission, yet. But it wouldn't be as capable as a real spacecraft, that much is certain, and I don't think we need to kid ourselves about that, yet.
Anyway, the cubesat people have a huge advantage in nimbleness that may off-set their equally huge disadvantage of not demonstrating an interplanetary mission, yet. But it wouldn't be as capable as a real spacecraft, that much is certain, and I don't think we need to kid ourselves about that, yet.
I take back what I just wrote. Wait until the budget comes out. You'll be surprised.
Do you think this ~$15M in FY15 is enough to count as a new start? Sounds more like they're relenting to the fact that Rep. Culbertson is going to put money into the budget anyway (and likely more than this).
Also heard some info about an "enhanced" MMRTG and a small nuclear reactor. The former is new to me and I don't know any details. The latter has been talked for awhile, but I did not realize that they had done some work on that (namely identifying a Nevada site where they could test a small reactor).