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NASA NTRS · 20150004639

Global Moon Coverage via Hyperbolic Flybys

Buffington, Brent·Strange, Nathan·Campagnola, Stefano
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Abstract

The scientific desire for global coverage of moons such as Jupiter's Galilean moons or Saturn's Titan has invariably led to the design of orbiter missions. These orbiter missions require a large amount of propellant needed to insert into orbit around such small bodies, and for a given launch vehicle, the additional propellant mass takes away from mass that could otherwise be used for scientific instrumentation on a multiple flyby-only mission. This paper will present methods--expanding upon techniques developed for the design of the Cassini prime and extended missions--to obtain near global moon coverage through multiple flybys. Furthermore we will show with proper instrument suite selection, a flyby-only mission can provide science return similar (and in some cases greater) to that of an orbiter mission.

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Buffington, Brent, Strange, Nathan, Campagnola, Stefano. 2012-10-29. Global Moon Coverage via Hyperbolic Flybys. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150004639

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