It’s been a nice year for solar system exploration, with two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto, being imaged close-up by Dawn and New Horizons respectively. ESA’s Rosetta and Philae have provided data and images from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, and will continue to do so as it amps up through perihelion. On Mars, Curiosity has begun the process of mapping hundreds of millions of geological section.

This year also so the end of MESSENGER’s mission on Mercury, the first orbital mission to that planet. The ESA mission Venus Express also finished up recently. Deep Space Climate Observatory is now parked at L1, sending sun-side data on the earth.

Juno is on the way to Jupiter: it will provide information about that planet’s internal structure, starting in 2016. Cassini is still returning information, and at present the plan is to terminate the mission in 2017: up til then it will engage in riskier maneuvres, closer and closer to the rings.

Hayabusa 2 is a sample return mission on its way to arrive at an Apollo asteroid in 2018, expected to return its sample in 2020. This is following up on the previous successful sample return mission Hayabusa.

There are a bunch of other active Mars missions: Mangalyaan, MAVEN, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, 2001 Mars Odyssey, even the Opportunity rover is still going. There are also several active lunar missions: ARTEMIS, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Chang’e 5-T1.
——

Here’s what needs doing, then:

A Venus lander. There has been no successful landing on Venus since the 1981, and the longest -lived of them lasted 2 hours. As is the case with Titan, the thick atmosphere makes a lander even more tempting, because it makes the surface impossible to image in the visible spectrum from orbit. There are a number of well-known reasons why a durable lander is a difficult task but a lander that could last even a month would provide better information about variations in surface conditions.

A polar lunar lander. There appears to be “ice” at the Moon’s poles: its composition and nature would be well-determined by a lander, supported by an orbiter. It would have to bring a non-solar power source, and some kind of light source if it wanted to take visible-range images. Something like this for the “ice” at Mercury’s poles would also be sweet.

Missions to Pallas and Hygiea. There have been nice orbital missions to two of the large asteroids already (Vesta and Ceres). The other two large ones appear to be quite different, and worth having a squiz at.

A bunch more comet-following missions. It would be particularly nice to see a very long period one, even one fresh from the cloud, though of course this would mean being ready to scramble more or less as soon as it was discovered.

A bunch more inner solar system sample return missions. Mercury, Mars, asteroids, comets.

Neptune orbital mission, with a Triton lander.

Uranus orbital mission.

The big four Jovian satellite landers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, you know you want it.

More transneptunian object flybys:
KBOs: Quaoar, Ixion, Orcus, Makemake, Haumea
Scattered Disk: Eris etc
Inner Oort: Sedna etc

Some kind of mission to the Oort cloud proper: this would take decades, though.

Giant planet probes, floaters or skimmers: get under the skin of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

What else?

It’s only July. We’ll knock over that lot before xmas.

dv said:

It’s been a nice year for solar system exploration, with two dwarf planets, Ceres and Pluto, being imaged close-up by Dawn and New Horizons respectively. ESA’s Rosetta and Philae have provided data and images from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, and will continue to do so as it amps up through perihelion. On Mars, Curiosity has begun the process of mapping hundreds of millions of geological section.

This year also so the end of MESSENGER’s mission on Mercury, the first orbital mission to that planet. The ESA mission Venus Express also finished up recently. Deep Space Climate Observatory is now parked at L1, sending sun-side data on the earth.

Juno is on the way to Jupiter: it will provide information about that planet’s internal structure, starting in 2016. Cassini is still returning information, and at present the plan is to terminate the mission in 2017: up til then it will engage in riskier maneuvres, closer and closer to the rings.

Hayabusa 2 is a sample return mission on its way to arrive at an Apollo asteroid in 2018, expected to return its sample in 2020. This is following up on the previous successful sample return mission Hayabusa.

There are a bunch of other active Mars missions: Mangalyaan, MAVEN, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, 2001 Mars Odyssey, even the Opportunity rover is still going. There are also several active lunar missions: ARTEMIS, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Chang’e 5-T1.
——

Here’s what needs doing, then:

A Venus lander. There has been no successful landing on Venus since the 1981, and the longest -lived of them lasted 2 hours. As is the case with Titan, the thick atmosphere makes a lander even more tempting, because it makes the surface impossible to image in the visible spectrum from orbit. There are a number of well-known reasons why a durable lander is a difficult task but a lander that could last even a month would provide better information about variations in surface conditions.

A polar lunar lander. There appears to be “ice” at the Moon’s poles: its composition and nature would be well-determined by a lander, supported by an orbiter. It would have to bring a non-solar power source, and some kind of light source if it wanted to take visible-range images. Something like this for the “ice” at Mercury’s poles would also be sweet.

Missions to Pallas and Hygiea. There have been nice orbital missions to two of the large asteroids already (Vesta and Ceres). The other two large ones appear to be quite different, and worth having a squiz at.

A bunch more comet-following missions. It would be particularly nice to see a very long period one, even one fresh from the cloud, though of course this would mean being ready to scramble more or less as soon as it was discovered.

A bunch more inner solar system sample return missions. Mercury, Mars, asteroids, comets.

Neptune orbital mission, with a Triton lander.

Uranus orbital mission.

The big four Jovian satellite landers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, you know you want it.

More transneptunian object flybys:
KBOs: Quaoar, Ixion, Orcus, Makemake, Haumea
Scattered Disk: Eris etc
Inner Oort: Sedna etc

Some kind of mission to the Oort cloud proper: this would take decades, though.

Giant planet probes, floaters or skimmers: get under the skin of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

What else?

Perhaps seeing if we can use some sort of 3d printer using local resources to print materials on other planets, moons,etc for future colonisation. Also see if we can melt frozen water and store it. Might be a bit beyond our technology at the moment.

It’s funny that, 24 years on, Russia still has not had a single successful mission outside low earth orbit or geostationary orbit.

Not even so much as an orbital probe to the moon in all that time. They’ve fallen behind India.

Still, they’ve got the manned launch to LEO game sewn up

dv said:

Neptune orbital mission, with a Triton lander.

What else?

Nothing else really matters, as long as petert gets his Triton back.

maybe that is smart of russia. making money while letting others do the exploration. and a, maybe, future payoff.

dv said:

It’s funny that, 24 years on, Russia still has not had a single successful mission outside low earth orbit or geostationary orbit.

Not even so much as an orbital probe to the moon in all that time. They’ve fallen behind India.

Still, they’ve got the manned launch to LEO game sewn up

Unless you are a meanie you’d wish even what is supposedly an enemy nation good luck with space exploration

JudgeMental said:

maybe that is smart of russia. making money

Russia is one of the few economies in an actual ongoing depression, contracting at 2.2% per annum

Cymek said:

dv said:

It’s funny that, 24 years on, Russia still has not had a single successful mission outside low earth orbit or geostationary orbit.

Not even so much as an orbital probe to the moon in all that time. They’ve fallen behind India.

Still, they’ve got the manned launch to LEO game sewn up

Unless you are a meanie you’d wish even what is supposedly an enemy nation good luck with space exploration

I wish no one ill. I was rather hoping Fobos-Grunt had succeeded.

dv said:

Cymek said:

dv said:

It’s funny that, 24 years on, Russia still has not had a single successful mission outside low earth orbit or geostationary orbit.

Not even so much as an orbital probe to the moon in all that time. They’ve fallen behind India.

Still, they’ve got the manned launch to LEO game sewn up

Unless you are a meanie you’d wish even what is supposedly an enemy nation good luck with space exploration

I wish no one ill. I was rather hoping Fobos-Grunt had succeeded.

Yes

dv said:

It’s funny that, 24 years on, Russia still has not had a single successful mission outside low earth orbit or geostationary orbit.

Not even so much as an orbital probe to the moon in all that time. They’ve fallen behind India.

Still, they’ve got the manned launch to LEO game sewn up

they don’t bother with anything that doesn’t involve tactical advantage against NATO, given they they’ve seen three major invasions against their territory in recent times they probably don’t have the will power to do anything that doesn’t involve national security. after the moon rocket debacle they walked away from it.

Sadly it seems the Finnish MetNet project has gone by the wayside.

Is it only the stupidly dense atmosphere which crushes metal preventing a successful landing on Venus?

Divine Angel said:

Is it only the stupidly dense atmosphere which crushes metal preventing a successful landing on Venus?

There have been several successful landings on Venus, but keeping the machines operating for long in the extreme heat is a problem.

Bubblecar said:

Divine Angel said:

Is it only the stupidly dense atmosphere which crushes metal preventing a successful landing on Venus?

There have been several successful landings on Venus, but keeping the machines operating for long in the extreme heat is a problem.

Isn’t the atmosphere also quite corrosive

Cymek said:

Isn’t the atmosphere also quite corrosive

The clouds have a lot of corrosive ingredients but once you get through them, there shouldn’t be a problem.

Divine Angel said:

Is it only the stupidly dense atmosphere which crushes metal preventing a successful landing on Venus?

That doesn’t help, but it is also somewhat corrosive because of the sulfuric acid, and warmish with an average temperature of 450 deg C.

Yeah, I just remembered the sulfuric acid rain and/or seas.

Still, materials science has come along in the last 30 years, with ceramics and composites and so forth.

dv said:

Still, materials science has come along in the last 30 years, with ceramics and composites and so forth.

Yes, it should be possible to make a very efficient Venusian lander. Maybe even a rover.

Can we send up a private mission to retrieve the massive diamond Russia left there? I think it would make a fine necklace.

This would be more of a challenge:

>Giant planet probes, floaters or skimmers: get under the skin of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

But instead it is all Hey let’s go to Mars again! Nice and easy, no surprises.

Divine Angel said:

Can we send up a private mission to retrieve the massive diamond Russia left there? I think it would make a fine necklace.

Why, or how did they do this?

dv said:

Still, materials science has come along in the last 30 years, with ceramics and composites and so forth.

And remote sensing capabilty more so.

bob(from black rock) said:

Divine Angel said:

Can we send up a private mission to retrieve the massive diamond Russia left there? I think it would make a fine necklace.

Why, or how did they do this?

I believe the Venera landers had diamond windows.

Oh, the other things that make a Venus lander tricky is that the atmosphere means surface illumination is poor, so you need longer exposure for your pictures, AND you probably need a nuclear power source rather than relying on solar panels.

Plus the absorption from the atmosphere means you probably will need an orbiter to relay information back to Earth.

Plus the winds can be high.

I’m not saying it is a walk in the park.

dv said:

Oh, the other things that make a Venus lander tricky is that the atmosphere means surface illumination is poor, so you need longer exposure for your pictures, AND you probably need a nuclear power source rather than relying on solar panels.

Plus the absorption from the atmosphere means you probably will need an orbiter to relay information back to Earth.

Plus the winds can be high.

I’m not saying it is a walk in the park.

You could send Chuck Norris.

I thought the Russian landers only detected light winds at the surface.

dv said:

Oh, the other things that make a Venus lander tricky is that the atmosphere means surface illumination is poor, so you need longer exposure for your pictures, AND you probably need a nuclear power source rather than relying on solar panels.

Plus the absorption from the atmosphere means you probably will need an orbiter to relay information back to Earth.

Plus the winds can be high.

I’m not saying it is a walk in the park.

With the gravity the same as Earths you’d never get a sample return mission either

Bubblecar said:

I thought the Russian landers only detected light winds at the surface.

It’s the upper winds that will get you.

dv said:

Scattered Disk: Eris etc

Eris’ moon is called Dysnomia. I love that word, just the way it rolls off the tongue.

dv said:

The big four Jovian satellite landers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, you know you want it.

Oh yeah. Except, not Europa. “Attempt no landing there”.

Oh yeah. Except, not Europa. “Attempt no landing there”.

i’ve seen the report.

esselte said:

dv said:

Scattered Disk: Eris etc

Eris’ moon is called Dysnomia. I love that word, just the way it rolls off the tongue.

dv said:

The big four Jovian satellite landers: Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, you know you want it.

Oh yeah. Except, not Europa. “Attempt no landing there”.

Dysnomia sounds as though it means wrongly named.

A great opportunity for a Neptune mission is going to go begging.

In 2019-20 there are windows for a nice Jupiter-assist, Saturn-assist mission to Neptune. This represents a bunch of delta-vee for free.

However, there are no such missions in the planning stage.

We won’t see another J-S-N layup like that again til around 2059.

Past 2019-20, the next window for a Jupiter assist to Neptune will be around 2032.

Argo Neptune Mission Concept

Quite detailed