Monday, September 01, 2014

Exploring Europa on a Budget

Three factors make exploring Europa hard. First, we want to explore an entire complex world, and mapping its features requires acquiring vast amounts of data. Second, Europa lies far from the Earth, which necessitates capable communications and power systems (read, “expensive”) to return the data to Earth. Third, Europa lies well within the harsh radiation fields surrounding Europa, which both requires significant radiation hardening (again, read, “expensive”) and limits the life of any spacecraft that explores this world. These factors can make a mission concept that seems like less actually be more.

The limiting factor on science for most planetary orbiters is not the time the instruments can make observations. Rather it is the time available to return data to Earth because many instruments can gather data far faster than the communications system can transmit it to antennas on Earth. (There also are a limited number of antennas to listen to planetary spacecraft, so few missions receive continuous coverage, and spacecraft often cannot continuously transmit either because they must turn to observe the planet or the planet itself blocks communication.)

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