The Arcanum Mission: Scientific Objectives and Instruments for Neptune, Triton and KBOs
James McKevitt, Christina Bornberg, Tom Dixon, Louis Ayin-Walsh, Jonathan Parkinson-Swift, James Morgan, Shayne Beegadhur, Franco Criscola, Carina Heinreichsberger, Bharath Simha Reddy Pappula, Sophie Bulla, Kuren Patel, Aryan Laad, Ethan Forder, Jaspreet Singh, Oisín Moore, Madalin Foghis, Paul Wedde, Thomas Mcdougall, Jack Kent, Utkarsh Raj
The Arcanum mission is a proposed L-class spacecraft that highlights the revolutionary approach which can now be taken to future space mission design. Using the case of the SpaceX Starship vehicle and in particular the high mass and volume characteristics of this launcher, the feasible large size of future missions, even with high delta-V transfer requirements, are analysed. A demonstrator vehicle, designed to support a large and capable science platform with multiple components, is detailed, clearly showing the range and depth of science goals that will be answerable thanks to the current revolution in super heavy-lift launch vehicles.
Comments: First presented at the 2021 Reinventing Space Conference held in London, 28-30 June 2021 and later published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society. 14 pages, 5 figures
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Journal reference: McKevitt, J. et al. (2021). ‘The Arcanum Mission: Scientific Objectives and Instruments for Neptune, Triton and KBOs’, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, 74(9), pp.25-35
Cite as: arXiv:2110.10808 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2110.10808v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
Submission history
From: James McKevitt
[v1] Wed, 20 Oct 2021 22:29:02 UTC (18,629 KB)