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http://www.space.com/businesstechnology … ]Ambitious proposal
*I searched for this and combed through half a dozen threads, beginning with this year. I don't see this proposed mission previously posted and will create a new thread for it.
Plans are to send the IIE out to a distance of 200 astronomical units. It'll possess a compact science payload weighing only 66 pounds. Will be launched from a Delta 4, hopefully in 2014. It'll have continued acceleration via ion thruster.
Should reach Jupiter 2 years after launch. Jupiter will provide a gravity-assisted boost. IIE should travel 7.8 AU per year (the article compares the travel rates of Voyagers -- much slower).
Will accelerate to burnout speed of 9.5 AU per year in 2029.
200 AU distance should be reached in 2044.
Lots more info in the article.
Nice, but I'd rather have the manned mission to Mars of course. Or the mission to Neptune with orbiter and probes. Or an orbiter and rover on Titan. Enough of the wish list, huh? :;):
--Cindy
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Sounds like a huge waste of money and time to me. The purpose of that probe is not to conduct science it's just to put something as far out as possible, to beat Voyager. Ion drives have been known to shut down in transit.
They say it will tell us where the heliopause ends buy Voyager should show us that.
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Will accelerate to burnout speed of 9.5 AU per year in 2029.
200 AU distance should be reached in 2044.
It's a fine craft but that still isn't up to much compared to other designs like solar sails, so why would they sell it as an Inter-Stellar explorer maybe because Voyager is going to get cut down ? For going to other systems maybe anti matter, nuke power, alternative ion drives, microwave sails the annihilation of matter with antimatter is 10 billion times more efficient than the oxygen-hydrogen combustion in the space shuttle. I'm not sure of the real number but when people speak of interstellar I come to think of it as reach another solar system - Wold 359 is perhaps 7 light-years away, Ross 128 is about 10 light years away, Sirius A & B are about 8.5 while Barnard's Star is about 6, now one lightyear = about 62,900 AU (astronomical units) this one has plans for only about 200 AU and is maybe why some say go for Solar sails, the ramjet fusion propulsion, and various ion drive design, the idea for this ion thruster running off electricity provided by radioisotope generators is fine, for exploring interstellar space we would need to be going at a small percentage the speed of light but this mission doesn't seem to be going to be breaking any speed records but instead filling in the gap after the Voyagers get axed.
nice mission all the same, but perhaps its is just a craft to fill in gaps when Voyager gets chopped down
'first steps are not for cheap, think about it...
did China build a great Wall in a day ?' ( Y L R newmars forum member )
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