Enceladus Vent Explorer Mission Architecture Trade Study

Mark Chodas, Masahiro Ono, Jessica Weber, Laura Rodriguez, Michel D. Ingham, Ben Hockman, Karl L. Mitchell, Morgan L. Cable, Jason Rabinovitch

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper presents the architecture trade study for the Enceladus Vent Explorer (EVE) mission concept, which would enable access to the potentially habitable subsurface ocean of Enceladus by traveling down the vent. A previous study (Ono et al. 2017) found that such a mission is technically feasible except for an extreme case where the largest vent on Enceladus has a diameter < 10 cm. However, the study did not investigate whether the EVE mission is implementable within realistic constraints on launch mass, cost, and risk in the foreseeable future. Our team performed a mission architecture trade study to determine whether an implementable mission architecture exists. The trade study considered alternatives in instrumentation, mobility systems, sampling strategies, landing location, and the number of spacecraft elements. As a result, we found that EVE is implementable within Flagship missio n launch mass and cost constraints but that the probability of mission success is low because of high environmental uncertainty. Our study highlights the criticality of future work along two thrusts. First, EVE would benefit from the continued development of several key technologies, including high-power tethers, miniaturization of instrumentation for chemical and biological analysis, autonomous mobility, and precision landing. Second, the substantial uncertainties in Enceladus environment conditions need to be reduced to have high confidence in missio n success. We recommend that, regardless of mission-specific scientific goals, future missions to Enceladus should collect data to reduce the uncertainty in several key environmental parameters in order to reduce risk for a future vent exploration missio n like EVE.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2023
ISBN (Electronic)9781665490320
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2023 - Big Sky, United States
Duration: 4 Mar 202311 Mar 2023

Publication series

NameIEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings
Volume2023-March
ISSN (Print)1095-323X

Conference

Conference2023 IEEE Aerospace Conference, AERO 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityBig Sky
Period4/03/2311/03/23

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