Planetary Exploration Spacecraft Design

Abstract

AbstractHaving only begun in the early 1960s, planetary‐exploration spacecraft design is a fairly new art. Between 1962 and 1973, NASA designed, built, and launched 10 spacecraft named Mariner to explore Venus, Mars, and Mercury for the first time. In 1962, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) launched the Mariner 2 spacecraft to explore Venus. In 1965, Mariner 4 flew by Mars and captured the first close‐up photos of another planet.Each year since 1962, NASA, the USSR, Japan, or the European Space Agency has launched at least one planetary‐exploration spacecraft. Two of the best known are NASA's Voyagers, which were launched in 1977, two years after NASA's Viking mission sent landers and orbiters to Mars. Today, 24 years after launch, Voyager 2 has completed a tour of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and still returns data from a distance of 64 AU. NASA spacecraft have visited every planet in the solar system except Pluto, and orbited Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. In 1975, the USSR's Venera 9 and 10 spacecraft sent the first photos from the surface of another planet (Venus); in 1986, the European Space Agency's Giotto spacecraft captured the first detailed photos of a comet's nucleus (Halley's). The NASA/JPL Cassini spacecraft is due to enter Saturn orbit in 2004. The NASA/APL MESSENGER spacecraft is due to orbit Mercury in 2009. MESSENGER is being built by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which also built the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous 10 (NEAR) spacecraft that orbited and touched down on the asteroid Eros in February 2001.This article addresses the important elements of planetary‐exploration spacecraft (PES) design. The scope of this article includes those spacecraft that fly by, orbit, or land on other planets, asteroids, or comets. Planetary‐exploration spacecraft are truly fascinating machines, and their missions are some of humankind's most audacious endeavors. Spacecraft elements are described in some detail, and the principal focus is on the system design and the technical subsystems. Ground stations, launch vehicles, science, and navigational elements are not addressed.