Joshua Vander Hook on NASA JPL
Solar system pony express
Notes by Paul Fischer
The data from HiRise and CRISM over 4 years, getting terabyte scale data back has been difficult, why can’t we take full mars maps every year?
We would need 1000x data for continuous surveillance
The opposite is also true
Mule because it carries the data physically, the alternative is a DTE direct to earth Link with deep space network DSN
During flyby, data mules can do more communication with mars than we could in years with a DSN
The data mule can stay near mars as long as it is needed to
For every bit of data sent to earth, ten bits can be stashed on the data mule
Eventually the data can be quickly downloaded to the data mule
Many multishotorbits could be and a multi cycler trajectory can be simulated to see the tractor in the future
Science context at mars
The total data volume would be approximately one petabit per year
Impact craters on mars… with a high resolution images to see the surface of mars
What about Saturn and Jupiter?
The farther you get away from earth, the more incentive that you have to use a data mule
The Jupiter question has an elephant in the room which is always radiation
The ultimate data compression technique, though Venus is pretty close, if you are going to make a round-trip, why not include a few hard drives?
The context beyond mars, increasing the data to under 5 petabits would allow a full planetary image of Venus, for Saturn load would be difficult even with a rideshare
Summary, here is what we know: pretty cheap using one shot trajectories, multi-use and each mule could also be doing science and tech with a big dataset of cycler orbit trajectories and link budget analyses
The main thing we had to do was to prove to ourselves that we would have to prove with the highest resolution models that we can get
Trajectories were the next hardest to get
After that it would be a lot of very little, and very large problems left
Q: the pony express would have to extrapolate a number of other linear solar concepts
A: how to connect to the DSN the deep space network that will be online in the next twenty or thirty years
Q: applications for interstellar missions far in the future?
A: I don’t feel qualified to talk about that, actually. The best way to transfer a lot of data and to tie it to a rock and send it over might be the case
Q: what about mars?
A: so that is tied to the DSN vs. the data mules, whatever is done to increase the communications to mars, would also facilitate the data mule
Q: expand on the viability for one of the multi-shot data mules?
A: do it on an esper ring, the range of estimates based on what we are getting etc… look at how to launch six cycler orbits at once
Q: would it be possible to do those all at once or sequentially?
A: there could be simultaneous or the original would be a cascading launch, so there could also be something sent later to pick up data. The most squeamishness in terms of logistics, but it does depend on how the numbers play out
Q: the diagrams really show what is happening on a trajectory?
A: managing the network that would be idle for a couple of times, ten years in cruise and how much propellant would be needed the committee suggested we would need something in terms of solar sales
Q: important in terms of crucial and game changing technology
A: somebody has to do all of the work, there is no one person that can say aha I know how that works, each piece needs to be designed for a complete design so the huge factor increase in what you are getting…
Q: scaled in some sort of smaller application?
A: someone asked what about the moon? Well there is no point in smaller scale use. We are hoping to scale up rather than to scale down.
Q: what are the means for constructing the mule?
A: mostly hard drives and of course shielding. Tackle that with redundancy, we don’t need any miracles.
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