Pluto's largest moon could give an orbiter a (almost) free ride

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Having a mission to fly over Pluto has taken decades, but an orbiter will take less time to tour the little world if an energy-saving ride could help reduce costs. The researchers determined that a future mission could use the huge Moon of the dwarf planet, Charon, as a gravitational accelerator to save fuel, thus allowing for many observations of the Pluto system and even allowing to visit another icy world in the outer solar system.

"With this gravitational system, Charon can take a spaceship beyond Pluto and into the Kuiper belt," planet scientist Alan Stern told Space.com. Stern and his colleagues at the Southwest Research Institute have studied various methods to develop a Pluto orbital mission while reducing fuel requirements. He introduced the opportunities to his colleagues at the annual conference of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in Knoxville, Tennessee.

"We can have our cake and eat it too!" Said Stern. [Destination Pluto: NASA’s New Horizons Mission in Pictures]

& # 39; A free lunch & # 39;

In July 2015, NASA's New Horizons mission revealed Pluto in all its splendor. The spaceship zipped by the dwarf planet, capturing images and collecting data without stopping during a lightning tour, raising even more questions about the most well-known dwarf planet, such as how it can continue to have geological and surface activity in such icy conditions.

An orbiter of Pluto could take a closer look at the mysteries of Pluto and the handful of satellites surrounding it. According to new research, Charon is the key to this business. Charon, which is almost half the size of its parent planet, could thus make the most important orbital corrections during the tour, like Titan, Saturn's moon, as part of Cassini's mission. The NASA.

"We discovered that we could do a complete orbit round: study all satellites, dive into the atmosphere … using Charon as gravity aids, just like Cassini had used Titan", Stern said.

"It's almost a fuel-free tour," he said, adding that fuel would only be needed for small "cleaning maneuvers".

Tiffany Finley, software manager, demonstrated that Pluto's tour could flourish thanks to dozens of Charon's assists. A spacecraft could pass at least five times through each of the four smaller moons, perform a close study of near Charon, examine the polar and equatorial regions of Pluto and even sample a portion of the dwarf planet's atmosphere. All of this would be possible using an electric propulsion system similar to that used by another NASA mission on a dwarf planet, Dawn, according to space flight engineer and mission designer Mark Tapley.

Charon could even stimulate the exploration of the Kuiper Belt, the field of ice and rocks at the edge of the solar system. Using the gravity of Pluto's largest moon, a spaceship could leave a dwarf planet and move towards a second, or even stop for a visit.

"We even discovered that it is even possible to reach and orbit a second dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt after studying Pluto," Tapley said in a statement. a statement. Possible targets included several known dwarf planets.

Stern said that an orbiter could flourish for years around Pluto, but he would only consider a mission three to four years before he left to explore his next target in the Kuiper Belt. The team plans to continue to publish more results and determine the attributes of the spacecraft system needed to carry out a Kuiper Pluto-Belt Orbiter mission.

"Our team showed that the global scientific community did not have to choose between a Pluto orbiter or an overflight of other Kuiper belt bodies, but could have both," Stern said.

"Sometimes you get a free lunch."

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