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In this chapter, the key technologies and the instrumentation required for the subsurface exploration of ocean worlds are discussed. The focus is laid on Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus because they have the highest potential for such missions in the near future. The exploration of their oceans requires landing on the surface, penetrating the thick ice shell with an ice-penetrating probe, and probably diving with an underwater vehicle through dozens of kilometers of water to the ocean floor, to have the chance to find life, if it exists. Technologically, such missions are extremely challenging. The required key technologies include power generation, communications, pressure resistance, radiation hardness, corrosion protection, navigation, miniaturization, autonomy, and sterilization and cleaning. Simpler mission concepts involve impactors and penetrators or – in the case of Enceladus – plume-fly-through missions.
The recently discovered first high velocity hyperbolic objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, have raised the question about near term missions to Interstellar Objects. In situ spacecraft exploration of these objects will allow the direct determination of both their structure and their chemical and isotopic composition, enabling an entirely new way of studying small bodies from outside our solar system. In this paper, we map various Interstellar Object classes to mission types, demonstrating that missions to a range of Interstellar Object classes are feasible, using existing or near-term technology. We describe flyby, rendezvous and sample return missions to interstellar objects, showing various ways to explore these bodies characterizing their surface, dynamics, structure and composition. Interstellar objects likely formed very far from the solar system in both time and space; their direct exploration will constrain their formation and history, situating them within the dynamical and chemical evolution of the Galaxy. These mission types also provide the opportunity to explore solar system bodies and perform measurements in the far outer solar system.
Following the successful PHILAE landing with ESA's ROSETTA probe and the launch of the MINERVA rovers and the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout, MASCOT, aboard the JAXA space probe, HAYABUSA2, to asteroid (162173) Ryugu, small landers have found increasing interest. Integrated at the instrument level in their mothership they support small solar system body studies. With efficient capabilities, resource-friendly design and inherent robustness they are an attractive exploration mission element. We discuss advantages and constraints of small sub-spacecraft, focusing on emerging areas of activity such as asteroid diversity studies, planetary defence, and asteroid mining, on the background of our projects PHILAE, MASCOT, MASCOT2, the JAXA-DLR Solar Power Sail Lander Design Study, and others. The GOSSAMER-1 solar sail deployment concept also involves independent separable sub-spacecraft operating synchronized to deploy the sail. Small spacecraft require big changes in the way we do things and occasionally a little more effort than would be anticipated based on a traditional large spacecraft approach. In a Constraints-Driven Engineering environment we apply Concurrent Design and Engineering (CD/CE), Concurrent Assembly, Integration and Verification (CAIV) and Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). Near-term solar sails will likely be small spacecraft which we expect to harmonize well with nano-scale separable instrument payload packages.
The recently proposed NASA and ESA missions to Saturn and Jupiter pose difficult tasks to mission designers because chemical propulsion scenarios are not capable of transferring heavy spacecraft into the outer solar system without the use of gravity assists. Thus our developed mission scenario based on the joint NASA/ESA Titan Saturn System Mission baselines solar electric propulsion to improve mission flexibility and transfer time. For the calculation of near-globally optimal low-thrust trajectories, we have used a method called Evolutionary Neurocontrol, which is implemented in the low-thrust trajectory optimization software InTrance. The studied solar electric propulsion scenario covers trajectory optimization of the interplanetary transfer including variations of the spacecraft's thrust level, the thrust unit's specific impulse and the solar power generator power level. Additionally developed software extensions enabled trajectory optimization with launcher-provided hyperbolic excess energy, a complex solar power generator model and a variable specific impulse ion engine model. For the investigated mission scenario, Evolutionary Neurocontrol yields good optimization results, which also hold valid for the more elaborate spacecraft models. Compared to Cassini/Huygens, the best found solutions have faster transfer times and a higher mission flexibility in general.
By DLR-contact, sample return missions to the large main-belt asteroid “19, Fortuna” have been studied. The mission scenario has been based on three ion thrusters of the RIT-22 model, which is presently under space qualification, and on solar arrays equipped with triple-junction GaAs solar cells. After having designed the spacecraft, the orbit-to-orbit trajectories for both, a one-way SEP mission with a chemical sample return and an all-SEP return mission, have been optimized using a combination of artificial neural networks with evolutionary algorithms. Additionally, body-to-body trajectories have been
investigated within a launch period between 2012 and 2015. For orbit-to-orbit calculation, the launch masses of the hybrid mission and of the all-SEP mission resulted in 2.05 tons and 1.56 tons, respectively, including a scientific payload of 246 kg. For the related transfer
durations 4.14 yrs and 4.62 yrs were obtained. Finally, a comparison between the mission scenarios based on SEP and on NEP have been carried out favouring clearly SEP.
We propose a simple parametric OSSD model that describes the variation of the sail film's optical coefficients with time, depending on the sail film's environmental history, i.e., the radiation dose. The primary intention of our model is not to describe the exact behavior of specific film-coating combinations in the real space environment, but to provide a more general parametric framework for describing the general optical degradation behavior of solar sails.
Searching optimal interplanetary trajectories for low-thrust spacecraft is usually a difficult and time-consuming task that involves much experience and expert knowledge in astrodynamics and optimal control theory. This is because the convergence behavior of traditional local optimizers, which are based on numerical optimal control methods, depends on an adequate initial guess, which is often hard to find, especially for very-low-thrust trajectories that necessitate many revolutions around the sun. The obtained solutions are typically close to the initial guess that is rarely close to the (unknown) global optimum. Within this paper, trajectory optimization problems are attacked from the perspective of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Inspired by natural archetypes, a smart global method for low-thrust trajectory optimization is proposed that fuses artificial neural networks and evolutionary algorithms into so-called evolutionary neurocontrollers. This novel method runs without an initial guess and does not require the attendance of an expert in astrodynamics and optimal control theory. This paper details how evolutionary neurocontrol works and how it could be implemented. The performance of the method is assessed for three different interplanetary missions with a thrust to mass ratio <0.15mN/kg (solar sail and nuclear electric).
With the increased interest for interstellar exploration after the discovery of exoplanets and the proposal by Breakthrough Starshot, this paper investigates the optimisation of photon-sail trajectories in Alpha Centauri. The prime objective is to find the optimal steering strategy for a photonic sail to get captured around one of the stars after a minimum-time transfer from Earth. By extending the idea of the Breakthrough Starshot project with a deceleration phase upon arrival, the mission’s scientific yield will be increased. As a secondary objective, transfer trajectories between the stars and orbit-raising manoeuvres to explore the habitable zones of the stars are investigated. All trajectories are optimised for minimum time of flight using the trajectory optimisation software InTrance. Depending on the sail technology, interstellar travel times of 77.6-18,790 years can be achieved, which presents an average improvement of 30% with respect to previous work. Still, significant technological development is required to reach and be captured in the Alpha-Centauri system in less than a century. Therefore, a fly-through mission arguably remains the only option for a first exploratory mission to Alpha Centauri, but the enticing results obtained in this work provide perspective for future long-residence missions to our closest neighbouring star system.