Perhaps most of us will never be a PI on one of NASA's Discovery, New Frontiers
or Flagship missions. However, let's not have that stop us, the UMSF community
from suggesting, and describing, mission concepts that have been rattling around
in our brains for some time. I'll start the ball rolling.

My fantasy mission (Discovery or NF class?) would be the Jupiter Flyer 1. This
would be an unmanned airplane, named after the Wrights' first airplane, that
would fly through the atmosphere of Jupiter. Its exterior would be covered
with cameras, showing views in all directions as it glided through the atmosphere
looking for thermals.

I know that most talk of Jupiter probes concerns deep atmospheric probes,
such as the one on the Galileo mission. However, I want to see photos of
towering cumulo-nimbus clouds, not just streams of numbers on P, T and
composition.

That's it in a nutshell. Are there any more takers?


Another Phil

I think it would be good idea to re-fly Galileo with small modifications like Cassini-like HGA...

Here's my wish list:

o Juno-class gas-giant/ice giant orbiters

o A series of gas-giant/ice-giant balloon probes

o Venus balloons

o A dedicated high speed interstellar precursor mission using solar sail and ion-drive technologies with possible outer planet and KBO flybys

o Lunar MER-class rovers

o Mars seismometry and weather network

Some are big, some are small, some are small multi-missions which might be treated as big... ...you get the idea!

Bob Shaw

Mars Network for me please I'd suggest 120kg landers ( so double the size/mass of Beagle ), approx 3-5 of them with a parental Orbiter designed to act as relay in a higher Mars orbit ( several thousand km ). BUT... .Mars is out of the scope of New Front, Flagship, and Discovery.


SO....

Discovery Class:
Contour 2

New Frontiers:
Venus Balloon that dips to and from the surface for sample collection, imaging, then going higher for relay and cool-off.

Flagship
Europa mission. Distant Jupiter orbit with high powered imager for mapping of all Gallileans, then multiple Europan flybys for very high resolution imaging, some form of radar/sounding instrument, and impacting microprobes.



Doug

I'm surprised that noone has mentioned my fantasy mission: The long-duration balloon ship on Titan, though realistically I agree that Europa should not be preempted.

Lately I have been fantasizing what I would do if I had Bill-Gates-type wealth. First, I would be proud (in a humble way) to have a Centsworth Foundation doing exactly what the Gates foundation is doing. Then, I would use four or five billion of my remaining wealth and indulge myself.

I fantasize contacting NASA and telling them that I would donate 3 billion to fund a flagship Titan mission. Presumably this would be a balloon mission but my only stipulation is that the Titan mission be in addition to and not a replacement for another, government funded flagship mission.

I would give an additional 1 billion to uprade the DSN to support the Titan and other NASA missions.

Small probes, perhaps in the size and appearance of soccer balls, released into
the rings of Saturn (or any other planet with similar debris around it) where they
can gently bounce off the particles, taking measurements and images as they
literally get knocked around. Perhaps even have the ability to attach themselves
onto any particularly interesting particles for longer analysis.

Some could even be sent into Saturn after their primary missions in the rings to
radio back data on the planet's upper atmosphere before burning up.


Not my original idea, but one I had mentioned earlier in this forum: Putting
instruments on the planetoid Icarus to study the Sun using the rock as a heat
and radiation shield when it gets closer than Mercury during its circuits of our star.
Of course the setup could also be used to study Icarus itself.


Sending drop probes into the geysers on Neptune's moon, Triton. That moon
by itself deserves a dedicated orbiter/lander mission.


Are the volcanoes of Io too hot for our current technology to have any probes
survive a plunge into them? Would a Deep Impact/Ranger style mission to get
close-up images of an Ioian volcano before their demise in the caldera be worth
it scientifically? The coolness factor is not a question here.

Visionary stuff, especially the Jupiter cloud mission (pretty! let's send it down the side of the Great Red Spot!) and the Io idea.

If one were looking to name the hypothetical Io mission, one could do worse than Empedocles - Greek philosopher, very interested in all matters cosmic, finished himself off by chucking himself into Mount Etna. although the volcano then spat out his sandal. (He's already got an asteroid named after him, but this mission seems perfect for him...)

I'm with centsworth II - Titan must be on the agenda. I know there are political sensitivities as some consider any talk of a Titan mission harmful to the Europa project. I also note that OPAG has determined that any Titan mission should be Flagship class. Whilst agreeing that Titan deserves a flagship mission in due course (the sooneer the better!) I wonder if something smaller could be sent in the meantime. I'm thinking of a minimal sized high orbiter with simple cameras to monitor the global weather and other possible active processes over a really long period. The aim would not necessarily be to greatly advance understanding of the processes (a job for the flagship) but to keep a log of them continuously over at least a whole Titan year (or preferably two) so that future detailed observations over more limited timescales can be set in their longer temporal context. As this doesn't seem to fit with NASA's plans perhaps everybody else should get together to see if something can be managed . . .

This sort of mission could be duplicated comparatively cheaply and used for other bodies where secular changes over years and decades are expected, such as Chiron or eccentric KBOs at perihelion.

After that? We have to find out what the heck Sedna is. I'd go for a fast flyby with a series of impactors targeted on different-looking areas.

Rovers and balloons on Titan, rover on Triton, already been mentioned. The MERs have spoiled me - I want to see pictures like I'm there, on the surface.

I'd suprised that no-one has mentioned really detailed investigation of the geysers on Enceladus. Quite how to do that. though, is tricky.

Chris

I'm afraid that Jupiter's clouds are the sorts of things that look much more impressive from 100,000km than from ten or even a thousand km. And from within? Maybe great for non-imaging experiments, but but how great a picture can you take from inside a cloud? One possible exception could be if a balloon could be manuvered into the eye of a gas giant storm.

The big attraction of Titan and Venus balloon missions (from a photographic standpoind) is that they can get BELOW the clouds, something not possible on the gas giants. Anyone looking for extrordinary images should stay away from gas giant balloons and stick to Titan and Venus. IMHO

My own 5 cents.

Discovery class of mission: Lunar polar lander.

New horizons class: Triton orbiter & penetrator.

Flagship missions: Europa orbiter & penetrator

2: One Io explorer remote sensing only but with the option of a small sample return of material collected from orbit.

I'd really love to be on the TMC review panel for this New Frontiers proposal

Once elected president, I will ensure that the following flagship/flagship+ class missions are rammed through Congress:

1. The Io Volcanic Observer: This mission would conduct 45+ flybys of everyone's favorite moon, conducting remote sensing observations as well deploying a network of penetrators with seismographs to study the distribution of active faults in Io's crust. This mission would orbit Jupiter and flyby Io in order to increase the length of the mission and lower the cost of the mission. The surface would be mapped at 125 m/pixel with higher resolution (< 50 m/pixel) over a significant portion of the surface. this mission would be designed to last at least 2 years in order to study time-variable phenomena at Io and in the rest of the Jupiter system.
2. Titan Orbiter/Zepplin: This would be a Titan orbital mission designed to map the surface using a high-resolution, 2-micron camera. The surface would be mapped a resolution of 200 m/pixel. The mission would also include a radar-mapper and altimetry, to complete the radar mapping conducted by Cassini. A piggy-back zepplin would explore Titan from an altitude of 10 km. The blimp would allow for much higher resolution observations of the surface, and direct sampling and analysis of surface materials (through decendable gondola). The blimp mission would last 45 days; the orbiter 1 to 2 years.
3. Neptune Orbiter+Triton lander: Cassini-class mission at Neptune with a Triton rover. The rover would be designed to explore Triton south polar region and would investigate the nature of the plumes. Due to the time -difference, the rover would have to be capable of autonomous investigation. The orbiter would be used to first search for a landing site, then used to investigate Neptune, Triton, and its system of rings and small moons. An end of mission scenario of landing on Proteus possible.
4. The Asteroid version of CONTOUR: Like CONTOUR, this Discovery-class mission would flyby a series of asteroids, examining the chemical makeup and geologic histories. At least 10 asteroids would be encountered from a wide variety of types. Such a mission would greatly expand out knowledge of asteroids by greatly increasing the number explored upclose.

Jason:

You'd been thinking about this for a while, eh?

Can I be Veep? I got a list too, see? Oh, damn, just remembered what happened to the last Veep with a satellite - he had to go into the movie business instead!

Bob Shaw

Hear, hear! This has been a dream mission for me ever since I read about the 'Asteroid Belt Explorer' (ABE) in Greg Bear's Eon. I always thought a mission on an Earth-return trajectory with about a two year orbit would be an efficient way to start exploring the Main Belt.

Since neither money nor realistic chance of approval are limiting factors, my dream mission would be to launch essentially a Hubble Telescope with ion propulsion (preferably nuclear-powered) out of the solar system. With that kind of resolving power, it need fly only a few tens of millions of kilometers from an object to get better than Earth-based resolution of it. Bristling with state-of-the-art instruments, it would return data on hundreds of objects ranging from asteroids to Kuiper Belt objects. One or two close flybys would be mandatory, of course, perhaps Jupiter and something in the Kuiper Belt. Five million km or less should qualify as a close flyby for even hundred meter-class objects. With long life, a Jupiter gravity assist, and ion propusion, perhaps we could even study objects in the Oort Cloud near mission end.

On the more realistic side, I'd sure like to see the DSN speed up deployment of the small antenna arrays for improved deep space communications.

Sounds like agreat list. I would add a Venus mission (or Venus missions). Some rovers and balloons, and a radar orbiter that would make higher resolution maps and map selected area at MOC/HIRISE resolution. I would also have infrared cameras designed to best take advantage of atmospheric windows to study the surface and look for hotspots.

My lonely vote goes for a Herschel mission -- basically, a Cassini for the planet that dare not speak its name.

I realize this would be fraught with both political and $$$ peril, but a series of craft with a standardized design for close in observations of Europa, Enceladus, Iapetus and Triton would be my pick.

A close runner up would be a pair of craft, designed for long term study of Uranus and Neptune.



Comment for the gas giant entry probe post above:

When Voyager II photographed the shadows of clouds rising up out of the Neptunian atmosphere near the terminator, I imagined being there and looking up at those towering cloud formations, an atmospheric probe of Neptune would at least have that to look at . . . . .

Just do what the audiovisual news media did when Voyager 2 flew by that
planet in 1986: They made the letter a in the name a short vowel, rather
than the usual long one. Doesn't sound quite as "cheeky" as a result.

Won't stop the preteens who think they're being oh-so-clever from saying
it the other way over and over, though.

And most importantly - the planet doesn't care what we call it, as it has its
own name but isn't telling anybody.

Wish list, hmmmmmmmm..............

I'll try to keep it short, but no promises.

Discovery:
- Venus multiprobe: several descent probes designed to float down as slowly as possible in the final descent phase. Taking photographic panoramas of the surface from low altitude (say 1000 meters) as they are pushed along by Venus' somewhat slow surface level winds.

New Fronteirs:
- Io observer. I've always wanted the mission Volcanopele mentioned. Multiple flybys of Io, taking thousands of images (and lots of color this time) of the surface, along with lots of targeted "plume sniffing" - measuring the dust and gas as the probe flys through different plumes. As a minor side benefit, throw in some Amalthea and Thebe flybys, and Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto as practical.
- New Horizons 2 and 3 - Uranus and Neptune flybys with Pluto probe clones, followed by suitable Kuiper Belt targets.
- direct entry Titan probe. Balloon probe, designed to drift as far as possible taking surface images and remote sensing over a variety of terrain. It is begining to look like there will be a lot more questions than answers about Titan's surface topography after the Cassini mission, and just getting a close look at a 500-600 KM swath of the surface could answer a lot of questions.

Flagship:
- Europa Orbiter
- Enceladus Orbiter with multiple penetrator class landers. And as long as we are going to Enceladus, give me a few close flybys of Dione, Tethys and Mimas before finally settling into final orbit. Yeah, I know you don't get any gravity assists from those small bodies, but I want more pics of the Dione ice cliffs. Preferably at a bit higher than the avearage 100 m resolution that we seemed to get from Cassini.

How about landing one rover on the top of Olympus Mons and another
at the bottom of Valleris Mariners. Imagine the views from those locations.

Or a balloon or airplane probe to those places - whatever works best.

MER EDL wouldn't work at the altitiude of Oly Mons

Doug

I figured they'd need retrorockets for those places, if we are talking
just a lander or rover.

I still think they'd be worth it for the science and the imagery.

Val Mer would be OK - it was after all one of the candidate MER sites - but Oly Mons is actually quite a boring place. The dome itself is only a few degrees of slope, for several hundred miles. You couldn't target near the Caldera really - which WOULD be interesting, and the end of the dome is a cliff, which again you couldn't target for Hartmann writes about it very well in the totally fantastic 'Explorers Guide to Mars'

Doug

I think an engineering demonstration might be in order for a Discovery or New Frontiers mission, depending on its overall cost...

We want to place seismometers on a lot of bodies out there via penetrators, right? Well, why not practice and demonstrate the technology fairly close to home?

Send a small fleet of penetrators to the Moon, each equippped with a seismometer. This way, you demonstrate the ability to emplace such devices on airless (or nearly airless) worlds, *and* you get a lunar seismometer network out of it.

-the other Doug

What's the slope of the cliff, though? Olympus Mons is so huge that these structures probably don't look anything like they do from orbit when you're on the surface. I'd bet that there's no place you can stand on Mars where you could actuallly see Olympus Mons looking like a mountain -- or indeed like a single structure at all.

Yep - it's probably too big and most of the slopes are pretty gentle (5-10%). However if the air quality was outstandingly clear then the summit could be visible from a distance of ~400km - it wouldn't look like a mountain but the fact that the horizon was 400km away would be amazingly weird.

Perverse though it may sound, there's really *no* interesting geology on Olympus Mons. We really do already know as much about it (other than extreme sports enthusiasts) as anyone would ever need. It's the geological interfaces which teach us things, and 25km above the mean surface of Mars, perched on a shield volcano, is *not* a way to use a precious resource like a rover!

It's also likely to be almost impossible to drive over with a MER-sized vehicle, being just a series of 'fresh' lava flows.

Bob Shaw

One thing we don't know is the composition of the lava flows, due to the fact that Tharsis is one of the dustiest places on the planet (which would also make it hard to drive a rover). But, an interesting thing to know would be if the composition is more similar to the plagioclase-rich "TES Type 1" basalt or the more pyroxene- or olivine-rich SNCs.

True; but that's about all that we could look for! We'd find more of interest in meteorite craters on the flank than anything else - in fact Olympus Mons might be a good place to look for non-Martian material...

...hmm...

Bob Shaw

I generally agree with you. I wasn't advocating sending a mission there--only saying that there would be some potentially interesting geology that could be done.

Though not as interesting as Aram Chaos, right?

Amen brutha.

The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is much like the Earth's atmosphere, i.e., there
are specific clouds within a realm of transparent gas. I think that you are confusing
the terms "gas" and "cloud." The views from my proposed Jupiter Flyer 1 would be
similar to the ones that you would get looking out of the window of a passenger
plane flying over the Earth, except that, I imagine, the view of Jupiter's clouds
may be more spectacular.

It is interesting that you mention Venus and Titan. Those 2 worlds do not have
clouds as we know them on the Earth. Rather, both worlds have global haze
layers that are so thick that they mask the view of the surface.

Again, with Jupiter Flyer 1, the goal would be to view the clouds themselves and
to compare them to the numerous types seen in our atmosphere, e.g. alto-cumulous,
strato-nimbus, cirro-stratus, etc.


Another Phil

An aerocapture technology demonstration would help outer planet / Titan orbiter missions.

Of course, once you do get to president you'll also have eleventy million pressure groups queuing up at the White House door putting the squeeze on you to get their own pet projects rammed through Congress while trying to skewer the ones they either despise or which they think are taking funding away from said pet projects.

For example, I notice your platform offers nothing for the Europa First Party. The sight of Titan and Triton jumping the queue is sure to make a lot of them quite unhappy.

======
Stephen

'Outer worlds & heliosphere survey' [TAU precursor]

Three identical spacecraft launched on separate Ares V test flights to three large, scientifically interesting Kuiper belt objects (with plans for flybys of other, much smaller KBOs post encounter). Radioisotope electric propulsion, 'New Horizons' style instrument suite for encounter, fields and particles instruments for post KBO heliosphere survey. Possible giant planet GA flybys en-route, but not essential (maybe throw in a Trojan or Centaur encounter instead).

You're right, this was not the model of jupiter I had in my mind, I imagined more of a global fog with swirls in it. What you describe would be interesting to see.

"Once elected president, I will ensure that the following flagship/flagship+ class missions are rammed through Congress:
1. The Io Volcanic Observer
2. Titan Orbiter/Zepplin
3. Neptune Orbiter+Triton lander
4. The Asteroid version of CONTOUR" -- volcanopele


Everyone knows a rich entrepreneur can get more done, and do it better than a politician. Which is why my fantasy involves a Bill Gates-like fortune at my disposal. I would personally finance my dream balloon mission to Titan while allowing the government to proceed at its snail-like pace to Europa, unencumbered by a Europa or Titan first debate.

The following idea was actually proposed to the Deep Impact
team as part of their EPO. In my opinion, the DI people should
have jumped at this proposal. As you will see in the summary
that I've linked to, an outside team had proposed adding small
cameras to the exterior of both Deep Impact modules.

To me, the most interesting view would have been from the camera
aimed at the Whipple Shields. It would have been fantastic
to get images of actual IMPACTS into the Shields. Talk about
inspiring people - that would have done it.

Sadly, NASA is a bureaucracy and turned this exciting proposal down.
Instead, the DI team WASTED their Education and Public Outreach dollars
on the usual bureaucratic, feel-good, projects that are soon forgotten.
They opted out of taking onboard an independent team that was
willing to produce historic, memorable images.

What a shame.

On the link below, go down the page to the "Decision Making"
section and click on "PROPOSAL FOR OPTIONAL ONBOARD
PUBLIC VIEWING CAMERA."

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/educ/HighPower.html


Another Phil

It wasn't an "outside" team with outlook in mind. It was a company with profit in mind.
The proposal had too many restrictions on it and propbably was undoable in the end

t

Ted said "t"

Could you expand on that?

No, let me rephrase that - "I can't agree with you there, Ted"

Phil

He probably meant " 'k ".

Not sure what happened to that post, but I have no idea what it was about now...

Ever since I saw this photograph of Saturn's moon Phoebe, and the evidence that it is a captured KBO, my fond dream has been a Deep Impact-style impactor on Phobe. Realistically, this is the easiest to reach unaltered Kuiper Belt object. I am fairly sure it can be done on a Discovery budget and solar power, if the "mothership" stores the encounter data and then transmits it over several months.

BTW, don't blame me for resurrecting this thread -- Ngunn mentioned it on "Mission to Sedna" and I found it.

This might not be a glam factor mission, but during one of Emily's 'casts during the Phoenix landing she mentioned that there doesn't seem to be anything in the pipeline to replace Odyssey and MRO during the next decade. Frankly, this seems to put the future of the Mars exploration program at risk if for no other reason than that the comm relay capability is proving itself more important then ever for high-rate data return.

At the very least, I'd sure like to see a downscaled version of the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter (MTO) revived and flown in order to maintain this infrastructure for both US and international missions. As is, it almost looks like ExoMars and APL (if approved) might have to go DTE, then several years elapse, and then MSR happens...again relying on DTE. Worrisome.

I don't see any point in a Mars sample return mission until we really get to know the surface better, and if we did, have a payload return of at least 10 kilos rather than the mere grams that they're talking about. There is an opportunity cost associated to a sample return mission that is too high with what still needs to be done to characterize the Martian surface.

I'd like a series of soft Landers with MER sized rovers, with one or two per launch window. With a standard design reducing development as much as possible, have up to ten flights over the next decade or so, and be capable of landing anywhere on Mars.

As much as possible, have the same payload per window so that the most unfavourable opportunity in terms of payload can be offset by the most powerful version of the Atlas 5.(I.e., the 551 assuming that is the most appropriate)

The soft Landers do what a stationary lander does best - like we're seeing with Phoenix, and have seismometers, meteorological stations, and a 10 M drill with enough payload flexibility so that each mission can be custom tailored. The rover will assist the lander in deploying surface experiments not unlike ALSEP, forage about looking for samples it can return to the lander, and eventually head out on its own. Solar powered, and have a means of self cleaning the panels.

Rather than de-orbiting the Hubble when it’s lifespan is nearing an end, launch it to the Asteroid belt and go on a massive tour. (That will require a lot of Detla V won’t happen with the current VSE architecture, and I’ll leave that debate on the NASA spaceflight.com forum)

Dude, that would cost megabucks to engineer & design, plus at least one additional Shuttle flight with a Centaur upper stage (crew required for attachment!) and major servicing to get it squared away for such a mission (probably including solar panel replacement). Sounds like $3-6 billion to me, so ain't gonna happen.

Would rather see any such funding allocated to JWST or, better yet, development of TPF.