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RedStreak

Banned

From: Illinois

Registered: 2006-05-12

Posts: 541

Re: Europa Ice Clippers

=http://www.spaceblogger.com/reports/Go … ce Clipper from Space Blogger, aka Europa sample return ala Deep Impact.

This sounds like an interesting concept daring enough to work.  Given the fiasco of JIMO and the Europa Orbiter a sample return mission would seem unspeakable, at least at first glance.

How much merit does this concept have?  Given how Lunar Prospector tried this same trick at the expense of the whole craft and yielding nadda...would a probe going even faster on a world whose crust is ironically pure ice have any better luck?  Thanks to Deep Impact whose tech seems to be the basis of this concept we now know it IS possible to blow chunks of comets into orbit but what of something planetary mass?

I think its worth a study at the very least, and the mission itself would be complex.

cIclops

Member

Registered: 2005-06-16

Posts: 3,230

Re: Europa Ice Clippers

Yes an interesting idea, all it needs is the $225m

BTW Lunar Prospector was a very successful orbiter that at the end of its life was crashed onto the lunar surface to try to create a plume that could be spectroscopically analyzed from Earth and space observatories. SMART-1 was also a successful orbiter that was impacted for the same purpose.

LCROSS (flying with LRO) is another mission that will have a separate impactor and a following spacecraft that will attempt to analyze the plume as it flies through before also impacting the lunar surface.

None of these missions are sample return.

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SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 28,866

Re: Europa Ice Clippers

Bump to group up similar topics

Mars_B4_Moon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-23

Posts: 9,267

Re: Europa Ice Clippers

maybe worth bumping again

ESA_Juice has just used up ~10% of its entire fuel supply in only 43 minutes in the largest engine burn that it will carry out between launch in 2023 and arrival at Jupiter in 2031.

https://twitter.com/esaoperations/statu … 8414765076

Did you know that with binoculars, a small telescope, or a zoom lens you can see Europa yourself? In this view, Europa is the dot just to the left of bright, star-like Jupiter. More about our favorite ocean world and how we'll explore it:

https://twitter.com/EuropaClipper/statu … 0733152368

Lunar Prospector mission ended July 1999, when the orbiter was deliberately crashed into a crater near the lunar south pole, after the presence of hydrogen was successfully detected. In 2013 an unidentified object was discovered in an unstable orbit around the Earth, and assigned the provisional number WT1190F. After it crashed into the Indian Ocean it was identified as probably the translunar injector of Lunar Prospector.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01 … on-rocket/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-11-23 07:53:40)