Trade space evaluation of multi-mission architectures for the exploration of Europa

Abstract

Recent cuts to NASA's planetary exploration budget have precipitated a debate in the community on whether large flagship missions to planetary bodies in the outer solar system or sequences of smaller missions as part of a long-term exploration program would be more beneficial. The work presented explores the trade between these two approaches as applied to the exploration of Europa and concentrates on identifying combinations of flyby, orbiter and/or lander missions that achieve high value at a lower cost than the Jupiter Europa Orbiter (JEO) flagship mission concept. The effects of the value attributed to the four main science objectives for Europa, which can be broadly classified as investigating the ocean, ice-shell, composition and geology, are demonstrated. The current approach proposed to complete the ocean exploration objective is shown to have conflicting requirements with the other three objectives. For missions that fully address all the science objectives, such as JEO, the ocean goal is therefore found to be the main cost driver. Instrument combinations for low-cost flyby missions are also presented, and simple lander designs able to achieve a wide range of objectives at a low additional cost are identified. Finally, the current designs for the Europa Habitability Mission (EHM) are compared to others in the trade space, based on the prioritization given to the science goals for the exploration of Europa. The current EHM flyby mission (Clipper) is found to be highly promising in terms of providing very high potential science value at a low cost.