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I’m wonder if they can miniaturize a camera and propulsion system enough that can travel fast enough to just take pics and bring them back instead of needing la

by m3kw9 4y ago

I’m wonder if they can miniaturize a camera and propulsion system enough that can travel fast enough to just take pics and bring them back instead of needing large antennas/power modules to transmit back in say a year or so?

nappy-doo 4y ago
No. It's very hard to go fast, and to get to Neptune, you need to burn a lot of fuel to get there. Getting home needs a whole lot more fuel too. Space travel is hard. You can go with lower energy transfer orbits, and wait forever to get there, or you can go high-speed and carry a ton of fuel with you.
- eesmith 4y ago
  Getting home requires no additional fuel if using a free-return trajectory and you don't want to be there for long. Jones, Drew Ryan, 2016, "Trajectories for flyby sample return at Saturn's moons", https://hdl.handle.net/2014/46163 https://hdl.handle.net/2014/46163, Root, V1 at https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/file.xhtml?fileId=53873&version=1.0 https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/file.xhtml?fileId=53873&versi... > Here an alternative and novel mission concept is analyzed to return a sample from either Titan or Enceladus, without capturing at Saturn. Instead, ballistic free return trajectories are sought which also incur a close encounter of the icy moon. The spacecraft could sample a plume (or upper atmosphere) during the hyperbolic flyby. The time frames are on the order of 20 years. OTOH, you would only have a few dozen hours near the planet. ("This 16 year mission, has the Titan flyby occurring about 10 hours prior to Saturn closest approach").
- gpm 4y ago
  If you plot your trajectory so that you will just slightly in front of neptune, shouldn't you be able to use it's gravity to slingshot you back towards the inner solar system? I'm skeptical that it's worth it... because higher powered radios just aren't that expensive, but it's not obviously (to me) impossible either. Actually capturing your probe back in earth orbit... probably would be prohibitively expensive. But it seems like you could at least get it close by for a shorter communication distance.
  - Sharlin 4y ago
    At the speeds needed to reach the outer Solar System in the first place, you would need to intersect the planet's surface (atmosphere, whatever) to get anywhere near the slingshot effect needed to throw you back to where you came from. Essentially it would only be possible with a black hole or another anomalously dense object.
jackmott42 4y ago
The mass to get the ship back and land safely is probably more than the antenna
reggedtorespond 4y ago
It's like 12 years to get there and another 12 years to get back. Sending information back at the speed of light is preferable.
Sharlin 4y ago
You don't need a very high-powered radio if a) you have plenty of time to transmit the data back and b) you can afford to build large receiving telescopes back on Earth. The latter we already do have, although bigger the better, and the former is just a case of patience. Galileo, famously, was unable to fully unfold its high-gain antenna and had to transmit everything via the much lower-bandwidth low-gain antenna. The ability to batch the probe software to use higher-efficiency data encoding and modulation meant this was not as disastrous as it could have been. This failure mode was also likely the reason that both Cassini and New Horizons opted for a more traditional rigid dish antenna.

by m3kw9 4y ago

nappy-doo 4y ago

No. It's very hard to go fast, and to get to Neptune, you need to burn a lot of fuel to get there. Getting home needs a whole lot more fuel too. Space travel is hard. You can go with lower energy transfer orbits, and wait forever to get there, or you can go high-speed and carry a ton of fuel with you.

eesmith 4y ago
Getting home requires no additional fuel if using a free-return trajectory and you don't want to be there for long. Jones, Drew Ryan, 2016, "Trajectories for flyby sample return at Saturn's moons", https://hdl.handle.net/2014/46163 https://hdl.handle.net/2014/46163, Root, V1 at https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/file.xhtml?fileId=53873&version=1.0 https://dataverse.jpl.nasa.gov/file.xhtml?fileId=53873&versi... > Here an alternative and novel mission concept is analyzed to return a sample from either Titan or Enceladus, without capturing at Saturn. Instead, ballistic free return trajectories are sought which also incur a close encounter of the icy moon. The spacecraft could sample a plume (or upper atmosphere) during the hyperbolic flyby. The time frames are on the order of 20 years. OTOH, you would only have a few dozen hours near the planet. ("This 16 year mission, has the Titan flyby occurring about 10 hours prior to Saturn closest approach").
gpm 4y ago
If you plot your trajectory so that you will just slightly in front of neptune, shouldn't you be able to use it's gravity to slingshot you back towards the inner solar system? I'm skeptical that it's worth it... because higher powered radios just aren't that expensive, but it's not obviously (to me) impossible either. Actually capturing your probe back in earth orbit... probably would be prohibitively expensive. But it seems like you could at least get it close by for a shorter communication distance.
- Sharlin 4y ago
  At the speeds needed to reach the outer Solar System in the first place, you would need to intersect the planet's surface (atmosphere, whatever) to get anywhere near the slingshot effect needed to throw you back to where you came from. Essentially it would only be possible with a black hole or another anomalously dense object.

jackmott42 4y ago

The mass to get the ship back and land safely is probably more than the antenna

reggedtorespond 4y ago

It's like 12 years to get there and another 12 years to get back. Sending information back at the speed of light is preferable.

Sharlin 4y ago

You don't need a very high-powered radio if a) you have plenty of time to transmit the data back and b) you can afford to build large receiving telescopes back on Earth. The latter we already do have, although bigger the better, and the former is just a case of patience. Galileo, famously, was unable to fully unfold its high-gain antenna and had to transmit everything via the much lower-bandwidth low-gain antenna. The ability to batch the probe software to use higher-efficiency data encoding and modulation meant this was not as disastrous as it could have been. This failure mode was also likely the reason that both Cassini and New Horizons opted for a more traditional rigid dish antenna.