Publication Date:
2019-11-14
Description:
The Triton Hopper is a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) project to design a mission to not merely land, but repeatedly fly across the surface of Triton, utilizing the volatile surface ices (primarily nitrogen) as propellant for a radioisotope-heated thermal rocket engine to launch across the surface and explore all the moon's varied terrain. An engineering design study of the vehicle and mission was done. With a calculated range of 20 km per hop, equator-to-pole mobility can be achieved over a primary mission duration of 2 years. Using Nuclear Electric Propulsion for the transfer vehicle, the same concept can be applied for a mission to the surface of Pluto.
Keywords:
Spacecraft Propulsion and Power
Type:
IAC-19,A3,5,7,x53412
,
GRC-E-DAA-TN74147
,
International Astronautical Congress (IAC) Conference; Oct 21, 2019 - Oct 25, 2019; Washington, DC; United States
Format:
application/pdf
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