The team completes the design of the first Pluto orbital tour and reveals that the orbiter can escape into the Kuiper Belt for further exploration – ScienceDaily

Dr. Alan Stern, Associate Vice President and Global Science Specialist, is leading the SwRI study. The team first discovered that many key scientific objectives could be achieved through the gravitational assistance of Pluto's giant satellite, Charon, rather than a thruster, thus allowing the orbiter to change its orbit to repeatedly to investigate various interactions of the solar wind for several years. The second realization shows that after reaching its scientific objectives at Pluto, the orbiter can then use Charon's gravity to escape the system without using fuel, launching the spacecraft into the Kuiper belt in order to use the same Electric propulsion system that he had usually enter Then explore other dwarf planets and smaller bodies of the Kuiper belt.

"It's revolutionary," Stern said. "Previously, NASA and the global scientific community thought that the next step in exploring the Kuiper Belt would be to choose between" deepening "the study of Pluto and its moons or" expanding "by examining smaller objects from the Kuiper belt and another dwarf planet – a comparison with Pluto The global scientific community has been debating the next step, and our studies show that you can do both in one mission – it's a game changer. "

The team also includes Dr. Mark Tapley, space flight engineer and mission designer, Dr. Amanda Zangari, global science scientist, and project leader John Scherrer and software manager Tiffany Finley, all members. of the Space Science and Engineering Division of SwRI.

Finley designed the Pluto orbital tour around dozens of Gravon gravitational assistance maneuvers. "This circuit is far from being optimized, but it is capable of making five or more flyovers of each of the four small moons of Pluto, while examining the polar and equatorial regions of Pluto with the help of The plan also allows for a close encounter with Charon before diving into Pluto 's atmosphere for sampling before the boat uses Charon one last time to escape. in the Kuiper belt for new missions, "she said.

Tapley's work has demonstrated that an electric propulsion system similar to that used by NASA's Dawn mission could power the orbiter to allow it to fly to other known objects of the belt. of Kuiper, including any of the dwarf planets. "In fact, we have discovered that it is even possible to reach and enter orbit around a second dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt after studying Pluto!" Tapley said.

In addition, Zangari led a separate study of missions on the 45 largest objects in the Kuiper belt and dwarf planets, with possible launches between 2025 and 2040. His work describes possible missions of 25 years or less on the dwarf planets Eris and Sedna via Jupiter-Neptune. swingbys, Quaoar, Makemake, Haumea via Jupiter-Saturn, and Varuna after an overview of Jupiter-Uranus. A journal detailing this work has been accepted by the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets.

"Who would have thought that a single mission using electric propulsion engines already available could do all that?" Stern said. "Now that our team has shown that the global scientific community did not have to choose between a Pluto orbiter or flybys of other bodies of the Kuiper belt, but could have both, I'm calling this mission combined the "gold standard" for the future of Pluto and the exploration of the Kuiper belt. "

The team will spend the next few months publishing more results and determining the attributes of the spacecraft system needed to complete the "reference" mission for Pluton – Kuiper Belt orbiter exploration.

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