ESA contribution to the Titan Saturn System Mission
Publication date: 12 February 2009
Journal: ESA-SRE(2008)4
Year: 2009
Copyright: ESA
This report describes the updated baseline of the internal assessment study that was performed with the assistance of the ESTEC Concurrent Design Facility (CDF) in June and July 2008. The main goals of the CDF study were:
- to assess the feasibility of the proposed mission
- to prepare for the future competitive industrial assessment studies by identifying critical issues that need addressing at higher priority
- to provide the building blocks and feed-back for further interaction with the science team for formulation of feasible mission goals.
To this end, the CDF study established bottom-up designs for three elements: a montgolfière, a long-lived lander (powered by an ASRG), and a minimum sized small lander of limited lifetime (powered by battery).
This report describes the design of the chosen baseline after the first technical iteration and incuding an updated mission profile providing enhanced mass capability of the delivery of the in situ elements, after the addition of a solar electric propulsion stage of the NASA orbiter.
This report is the result of an independent ESA internal assessment study.
Link to publication