Wow, that's great, thanks Joe! The soccer ball probes do indeed have the potential for all sorts of space missions, including at Europa. Starting off with your initial design, would the nuclear battery interfere with the instruments through its radiation? I was thinking of more conventional batteries in terms of cost, but if nuclear batteries work, that's great because they will last much longer of course. Larry ----- Original Message ----- From: Joe Latrell Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 3:10 AM To: Europa IcePIC mailing list Subject: Re: Soccer Balls to Saturn's Rings
Larry,
Do you mean something like this:
http://www.europa-icepick.org/klaes_probe.shtml
Just a quick rendering set I did. I do love the concept and think it
can be flushed out even more. If these things are smaller than 30cm
across and weigh only a few kilograms then someone out there would have
a use for them if only as a standardized platform.
Joe L.
On Wed, 2003-08-06 at 22:46, LARRY KLAES wrote:
> Here is a mission concept I have been thinking about for a while.
> It does not have a direct connection to Europa exploration, but
> some of the ideas could be applied to future missions there.
>
> Besides, whenever we start talking about something besides
> Icepick and Europa on this list, we always get someone new
> asking where the Icepick-Europa info is, and that leads us back
> to the main topic. :^) I promise, though, if you read through
> this article, you will see it connect back to Icepick and our
> favorite Galilean moon.
>
> Now about my idea: The rings of Saturn have always been
> fascinating and - until 1977 with the discovery of similar ones
> around Uranus - unique objects in the Sol system. Around
> 1980 I envisioned a well-armored probe that would fly among
> the rings, scoop up some debris (in 1970 radar examinations
> had shown the ring particles to average 3 feet in diameter),
> and return them to Earth.
>
> While such an idea still has appeal, perhaps by the time we
> have the capabilities and resources for such a mission that
> we won't need to bring ring samples all the way back to Earth
> but can examine them thoroughly on site or at a nearby Saturn
> colony. Plus we would need a bunch of such samplers to get
> a real cross-section of the rings and that would be costly.
>
> My recent idea envisions a group of spherical robots released
> into the rings, where they would gently bounce around, off,
> and through the debris, sampling the surfaces as they alight, and
> imaging the ice blocks both from a distance and at a microscopic
> level when they briefly land. They could even follow the rings
> around the planet, displaying orbital patterns and determining
> what the different colored ring lanes are made of. They could
> even examine the famous and mysterious spokes in detail.
>
> For lack of a better description, the probes would look like soccer
> balls bouncing among the ring debris for as long as their batteries
> last.
>
> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971210.html
>
> They could relay their findings to a larger and more sophisticated
> orbiter located outside the rings - the very vessel that brought them
> to Saturn - which would send the data to Earth. These soccer ball
> probes could even be landed on some of the smaller moons or dropped
> into Saturn's atmosphere to relay data before being extinguished deep
> into the clouds. Or they could be sent into the planet's
> magnetosphere.
>
> I can see these probes being modified for exploration all over the
> Sol system. And with so many being deposited, if a few are lost
> the mission is not. Plus they can be modified for specific data-
> gathering tasks. For example, I can envision a bunch of soccer
> ball probes being released into the ocean of Europa and relaying
> data to the probe that bored its way through the ice crust,
> which would in turn be able to get the data back to the surface
> without having to leave the vicinity.
>
> So what do you think? Think we can convince a space agency
> to look into this more? Think we can design a detailed prototype?
> This is how Icepick got its start.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Larry
>
>
>
==
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