VI-th
Symposium on realistic near-term advanced scientific Space missions review Salvatore
Santoli INT
- International Nanobiological Testbed Ltd., Italy-UK This
is the sixth edition of the symposium organized every two years in Jean-Michel Contant, Giancarlo Genta, Michael
Gruntman, Heiner
Klinkrad, Les
Johnson, Gregory
Matloff, Yoshinari Minami, Eberhard Moebius, Salvatore Santoli, Leslie Shepherd, Giovanni Vulpetti. Twenty-four
papers were presented. The following is a short review of all papers presented
at the symposium. Seventeen out of the twenty-four papers were selected by the
referees of the papers discussed at the symposium for proposal of publication
in the journal Acta Astronautica. Paul
A.Gilster. Interstellar Flight and
the Public Imagination. Here
the problem is considered concerning the education of the public in
interstellar travel issues as public involvement is considered to be an
essential component of research, given the realities of straitened budgets and
changing government strategies to respond to our society's vision of space
exploration. It is remarked that no space agency can do the Europe Jupiter
System Mission, for example, without a public sufficiently attuned to the
interesting things that might be found among the Galilean satellites that
justify the outlay. The role is examined of journalism and of the Web sites
devoted to space, and it is advocated that researchers would master the new
environment created by suitable reportage by learning to work with the writers
and journalists whose job is to publicize their efforts, hoping that a fired
public imagination will feed new sources of financial support. Marco C.Bernasconi. Space Exploration in the 21st Century: True
Escapism or Deep Ethical Motives? This
paper discusses the fact that about fifty years ago some supporters of
Astronautics got into a philosophical discussion as to whether space
exploration represented a form of escapism. The Author's analysis concludes
that beyond the philosophical considerations, we have to dream up systems for
generating industrial power, for producing new wealth, and for keeping wealth.
Astronautics realizations may provide both the material and social resources to
make the respects of individuals' moral rights durative. Then deep space
exploration will have freed itself of any suggestion of escapism. Giancarlo Genta. The Nuclear Renaissance: From the Power Industry to
Space Exploration? Space
exploration seems to regain momentum, with the commitment by several space
agencies to return to the Moon and the plans go beyond, at least to Mars, with
human expeditions in a foreseeable future. True space exploration involves
however a human presence in very deep space, beyond the orbit of Mars. While
the vision of the space imperative does not impose a deadline, many supporters
of the space option strongly support the idea that we have a time window to
start our space faring civilization and a delay will cause our thrust outwards
to stall, with the subsequent decline of our civilization. Is this vision
correct, or we should now concentrate on developing enabling technologies to
prepare a future in which human expansion in space, although slower, will lead
to a civilization deeply influenced by its space faring character? Tibor Pacher. Unconventional Thinking in Interstellar Spaceflight
Research: Practical Approaches. Interstellar
space flight and closely related topics, like a possible encounter with
extraterrestrial life, are on the edge of interdisciplinary research. By their
very nature these topics require unconventional thinking. Accordingly, two
practical approaches that are expected to generate new ideas for practical
interstellar flight involve the public and are not restricted to academics: the
formulation, call and publication in a controlled way on the Web of Crazy Ideas, e.g. as the Crazy Ideas section at www.peregrinus-interstellar.net;
and/or the formulation of a provocative but accountable prediction, e.g. cf.
Interstellar Bet at www.longbets.org/395.
Other possibilities are also explored for fostering ideas and unconventional
thinking. Nick Kanas. From Earth's Orbit to
the Outer Planets and Beyond: Psychological Issues in Space. Current
planning for the first interplanetary expedition to Mars in the early 2030s
envisions a crew of six or seven people and a mission
duration of around 2.5 years. However, this time frame is much less than that
expected on expeditions to the outer solar system, where total mission
durations of 10 or more years are likely. Although future technological
breakthroughs in propulsion systems and space vehicle construction may sped up
transit times, for now we must realistically consider the psychological impact
of missions lasting for one or more decades. Strategies for dealing with
psychological issues involving missions to the outer solar system are here
considered and discussed, along with issues related to new technologies being
considered for interstellar missions, such as putting the crew in suspended
animation or creating giant self-contained generation ships of colonists who
will not return to Earth. Les Johnson, Mark Whorton, Andy Heaton, Robin Pinson. Nanosail-D: A Solar Sail Demonstration The
characteristics of the Nanosail-D mission that unfortunately due to the launch
vehicle failure never had the opportunity to deploy are here described. The
Nanosail-D would have been the first on-orbit solar sail deployment
demonstration. Details concerning the planned deployment successive operations
are given. Roman Ya. Kezerashvili, Justin
F.Vázquez-Poritz. Deviations from
Keplerian Orbits for Solar Sails. During
the last two decades, a number of solar probes have been designed to perform
in-situ near-Sun measurements in a rather unusual and difficult environment
like that met by a solar probe penetrating to a few solar radii as the region
of less than 0.3 astronomical units. It is shown that the curvature of space time, a possible net electric charge on the sun, a
small positive cosmological constant and the oblateness of the Sun, in
conjunction with solar radiation pressure affect the bound orbital motion of
solar sails and lead to deviations from Kepler's third law for heliocentric and
non-Keplerian orbits. With regard to the Lense-Thirring effect, the solar
radiation pressure increases the amount of precession per orbit for polar
orbits. Non-Keplerian polar orbits exhibit an analogy of the Lense-Thirring
effect in which the orbital plane precesses around the Sun. C.Bruno, D.Simone. Nuclear Electric
Propulsion for Interstellar Precursor Missions. Interstellar
precursor missions are considered where the propulsion system is based on a
fission power nuclear reactor. This preliminary study suggests that nuclear
electric propulsion may become a viable propulsion system for probes and spacecraft capable of exploring the
farthest reaches of the solar system and possibly beyond. P.Janhunen. Status Report of the
Electric Sail - A Revolutionary Near-Term Propulsion Technique in the Solar
System. The
electric sail is a new propulsion concept which uses charged tethers to extract
momentum from the solar wind by Coulomb interaction. The status of this
propulsion technique is given as of A.A. Quarta, G. Mengali, P. Janhunen. Optimal Interplanetary
Rendezvous Combining Electric Sail and High Thrust Propulsion System. The
performance of an electric sail for minimum time missions towards planets in
the solar system is quantified under the simplified assumption of circular
planetary orbits. Tow possible mission scenarios are investigated: in the first
case, the sailcraft reaches the target with zero hyperbolic excess velocity,
thus performing a rendezvous mission. In the second mission scenario the final
hyperbolic excess speed is zeroed through a suitable chemical propeller. Giovanni Vulpetti. Effects of the Total
Solar Irradiance Fluctuations on Sailcraft Trajectories. Strangely
enough, in the last four or five decades of photon-solar sailing studies, he solar
radiation pressure on the sail has been assumed always constant. In the
fifties/sixties some conjectures and/or preliminary theories suggested that the
solar radiant existence was not constant as claimed by Astrophysics. Indeed,
from the standpoint of solar system evolution, such as planet climate,
interplanetary plasma features and its interactions with the celestial bodies,
photon irradiance etc., the Sun is remarkably variable. As solar radiation
pressure is the primary source of momentum change of a photon sailcraft, this
paper is the first one of a planned set of papers where total solar irradiance
variations are explicitly included in a large high-precision computer code for
sailcraft trajectory optimization. Mars - sailcraft rendezvous has been chosen
to begin with studying such effects. Roman Ya. Kezerashvili, Justin F.
Vázquez-Poritz. Escape Trajectories of Solar Sails and General
Relativity. General
relativity can have a significant impact on the long-range escape trajectories
of solar sails deployed near the Sun. Space-time curvature in the vicinity of
the Sun can cause a solar sail travelling from 0.01 astronomical units (AU) to
2550 AU to be deflected by as much as one million kilometres, and should
therefore be taken into account at the beginning of the mission. There are a
number of smaller general relativistic effects, such as frame dragging due to
the slow rotation of the Sun which can cause a deflection of more than one
thousand kilometres. Giovanni Vulpetti. Reaching Extra solar System Targets via Large
Post-Perihelion Lightness-Jumping Sailcraft. The fast solar sailing theory, formulated after the preliminary study of
a photonic propulsion spacecraft featuring an ultra light monolayer solar sail
with a reflective membrane of carbon nanotubes obtained by a novel technology
for carbon nanotube membranes, allowing cruise speeds up to some thousandths
the speed of light (Giovanni Vulpetti, Salvatore Santoli and Gabriele Mocci, Preliminary Investigation on Carbon Nanotube
Membranes for Photon Solar Sails, JBIS,
Vol. 61, No. 8, pp. 284-289, ISSN 0007-084X) is here applied for the first time
to a multi-target mission sailcraft with maximum lightness number significantly
greater than 1. The farthest target is the solar gravitational lens zone. The
high speed of this solar sail allows distances of 550 astronomical units to be
reached 17.5 years after the departure from the Earth-Moon system. The
astrodynamical concept of large post-perihelion lightness-jumping is discussed
and all details of the sailcraft structure and engineering design are
illustrated. Claudio Maccone. Focal A
review is presented of a 2009 status of the FOCAL space mission, that has been
studied by the author and others since 1992 and was formally proposed to ESA
for consideration after the year 2000, and whose objective is the realization
of a probe to reach distances between 550 and 1000 astronomical units (AU) to
exploit the huge radio magnification provided there by the gravitational lens
of the Sun, as predicted by the general theory of relativity. It is stressed
that the present status FOCAL technologies mainly consist in the use of a
relativistic interstellar flight profile called "hyperbolic motion" to reach
1000 AU in the smallest amount of time and the relevant propulsion problems,
and in the utilization of the relativistic Karhunen Loève Transform
(KLT) instead of the classical FFT to insure optimal telecommunications with
the Earth during such relativistic flight. Arturo
Graziano Grappone. Assembly-Level
Anticipatory Programming in Space Missions. With
a view to developing an efficient software an a remarkable reduction of
hardware in space missions, and with a strong reduction of payload and
considerable savings for launchers, the principles of the emerging mathematics
for anticipatory systems are illustrated and then a direct implementation of
the anticipatory mathematics iterative algorithm is proposed by low-level
programming, i.e. by a reformulation of the Assembly language. Greg L. Matloff, Monika Wilga. NEOs as Stepping Stones
to Mars and Main-Belt Asteroids. Human
interplanetary ambitions are constrained by the problem of astronaut exposure
to galactic radiation. I survey is here presented of the existing on-line Near
Earth Object (NEO) database in an attempt to identify NEOs that cross both
Earth's and Mars's orbits and could be used as cosmic-rays shields by
interplanetary voyagers. The search concentrated on low-inclination
Mars-crossing NEOs that approach Earth, Mars and main-belt asteroids in the
time frame 20020-2100. Both outbound and return transfers were searched for.
Several candidate NEOs for Earth-Mars, Mars-Earth and Earth-Vesta transfers
have been found from the very incomplete existing database of about 5,000 NEOs.
Kinematics of Earth-NEO transfer is also considered. F. De Tiberis, L. Simone, D. Gelfusa, P. Simone, R.
Viola, A. Santoni, O. Cocciolillo, M.Ziarelli, F. Barletta, N. Salerno, M.
Maffei, V. Nanni. The X/X/KA-Band Deep Space Transponder For the BepiColombo Mission to Mercury. A
detailed overview and the architectural design of the Deep Space Transponder
equipment that has been developed by Thales Alenia Space, Italy, for the
European Space Agency (ESA) BepiColombo mission to Mercury, whose scientific
goals were aimed at estimating the rotational dynamics of Mercury, thus
allowing to accurately infer the internal structure; the global structure of
the gravity field of Mercury, thus allowing to accurately infer the internal
structure; the local gravitational anomalies of Mercury, thus allowing to
accurately infer the structure of the mantle and the crust-mantel interface;
the orbit of Mercury around the Sun and the propagation of electromagnetic
waves between the Earth and Mercury, in order to improve the determination of
the post-Newtonian parameters and test the General Theory of Relativity to an
unprecedented level of accuracy. Giancarlo Genta, Alessandro Genta. A Small Robotic Rover
for Titan Exploration. Part 1: General Layout. Titan
is a very interesting target in deep space exploration. With its solid surface
on which a rover can easily travel and its methane lakes which can be sailed it
is the ideal target for a deep space mission which includes a mobile platform.
If the Huygens lander of the Cassini mission had a device of this type, the
scientific returns of that already most successful mission would have been much
larger. The general layout of a rover for a mission to Titan is studied. The
results apply not only to a future mission to Titan, but also to other missions
that in the future will be designed for reaching satellites of the outer
planets of size comparable with that of Titan and the largest Kuiper belt
objects like Pluto and 136472 Makemake. The simple configuration studied in
this paper for a small rover allows the rover to move on the surface of Titan
both on solid and liquid surfaces. A radioisotope thermoelectric or thermal
generator is suggested as the power source, and a set of wheels was designed
that could be used as paddle wheels for sailing the methane lakes with a
methane-tight vehicle shaped as a boat by raising the wheels above the liquid
level. Giancarlo Genta. A Small Robotic Rover
for Titan Exploration. Part 2: Strategies for Trajectory Control. In
the configuration study for a small robotic rover for Titan exploration
described in Part Salvatore Santoli. Devising an
Unconventional Formal Logic for Bioinspired Spacefaring Automata. The
field of robotics is increasingly moving from robots confined to factory floors
and assembly lines and bound to perform the same tasks over and over in an
uncertainty-free, well foreseeable environment, to robots designed for
operating in highly dynamic and uncertain domains, like those of interest in
space exploration. According to an idea of a "new system of formal logic less rigid than past and present formal
logic" advocated by J. von Neumann for building a powerful theory of
automata, such system should be "closer
to another discipline which has been little linked in the past with logic, i.e.
thermodynamics, primarily in the form it was received by Boltzmann".
Following that idea, which is particularly interesting now with the emerging
computational nanosciences, it is stressed here that a full set of isomorphisms
can be established between the fundamental logical principles and the
information flows, Hamiltonian or dissipative, in phase space. This form of
logic, dubbed here kinetic logic,
takes standard formal logic out of the field of combinatory and into the field
of the Boltzmannian form of thermodynamics, i.e. kinetics. J. Poncy, V. Martinot, J. Fontdecaba-Baix, F. Feresin. A Preliminary Assessment of an Orbiter in the Haumean
System: How Quickly Can a Planetary Orbiter Reach Such a Distant Target? With
the recent discoveries of planetary objects beyond Neptune and Pluto, the vast
majority of all sizeable Solar System planetary objects lie now beyond Uranus,
where insertion into orbit after a reasonably short travel is still not within
the current capabilities of our spacecraft. Being able to go and stop at a
transneptunian dwarf planet would represent a stepping-stone for ambitious
long-term goals such as Solar System colonization or interstellar travel, both
in term of technology and logistics. Thales Alenia Space has carried out a
preliminary assessment of a mission with a challenging target of such kind: in
orbiter in the Haumean system. The main parameters of the mission design are
presented, and a review is supplied of the technological options and
challenges. The performance is inferred for high-specific-impulse propulsion
and power generation as a function of launch mass and allowed cruise duration.
An optimum specific impulse of about 10,000 was identified. It is concluded
that carrying out such a mission within a reasonable duration compatible with
scientists' careers would demand progress beyond the current state of the art,
mainly for mass of power generators. Nikolay Slyunyayev, Alexander Degtyarev, Oleg
Ventskovsky. Concept of Creation of
the Orbital Stages for Deep Space Missions. A
concept of creation of the orbital stages of the rocket-space systems capable
to deliver payloads to the far borders of the Solar System is discussed. The
concept assumes that the rocket starts from the Earth using off-the-shelf
chemical fuel engines with specific impulse in the range of 300 - 600 s. For
further flight of the orbital stage the energy sources employed were the
gravitational fields of the Earth and planets, the magnetic fields of the Earth
and planets, and solar radiation energy, with options of the orbital stage
design characteristics for collection of the dangerous asteroids. Claudio Maccone. The Living Drake
Equation of the Tau Zero Foundation. The
Living Drake Equation is the
statistical generalization developed in this paper of the well known Drake
equation such that it can take into account any number of factors. The new
result opens up the possibility to enrich the original equation by inserting
more new factors as long as the scientific learning increases. The qualifier Living refers just to this envisage able
continuous enrichment of the Drake equation and is the goal of a new research
project that the Tau Zero Foundation has entrusted to the author of this paper
as the discoverer of the Statistical Drake Equation described here. The
original Drake equation is in the form of a simple product of seven positive
numbers, and such equation is here transformed into the product of seven
positive random numbers. The mathematical consequences of this transformation
consist in giving the Drake equation a more scientific character as the
original purely arbitrary deterministic parameters are substituted with
statistical estimates whose accuracy will increase as the advancement of
knowledge as relative will increase. Moreover, this development makes the
original arbitrary Drake equation the characteristic scientific feature of being
falsifiable. |
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