NASA Releases Mission Requirements for Proposed Jupiter Mission
May 26, 2004
NASA has issued its mission design requirements to three industry
teams for a proposed mission to Jupiter and its three icy moons.
The requirements are also the first product formulated by NASA's
new Office of Exploration Systems in Washington.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter is a spacecraft with an ambitious
proposed mission that would orbit three planet-sized moons of
Jupiter -- Callisto, Ganymede and Europa -- that may harbor vast
oceans beneath their icy surfaces. The mission would be powered by
a nuclear reactor and launched sometime in the next decade.
Associate Administrator retired Rear Adm. Craig E. Steidle of
NASA's Office of Exploration Systems said, "The Jupiter Icy Moons
Orbiter requirements represent our new way of doing business,
tracing exploration strategies to the technology maturation
programs that will enable this exciting mission and the other
missions that make up Project Constellation."
The Request for Proposal was released this week to the three
previously qualified industry teams led by Boeing, Huntington
Beach, Calif.; Lockheed Martin, Denver; and Northrop Grumman,
Redondo Beach, Calif. These three companies are currently
working under study contracts investigating conceptual designs
for the mission. The proposals are due July 16, 2004.
The scope of the initial contract is to co-design the spacecraft
through the preliminary design with the government team. A
contract modification will be issued after preliminary design to
implement the design, to integrate and test the spacecraft and to
integrate the spacecraft with the reactor module and mission
module. JPL would be responsible for delivering the mission
module, which would include instruments procured competitively
via a NASA announcement of opportunity. The launch vehicle will
be supplied by NASA. The Department of Energy's Office of Naval
Reactors would be responsible for the reactor module. To ensure
the technologies demonstrated are consistent and coordinated with
the Vision for Space Exploration, Project Constellation is
managed within the Office of Exploration Systems.
"Although the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission may not launch
until the next decade, the study of revolutionary new
technologies in spacecraft design is underway in the areas of
power conversion and heat rejection, electric propulsion,
radiation hardened electronics and materials, and
telecommunications," said Karla Clark, industry studies lead and
deep space avionics project manager for the Jupiter Icy Moons
Orbiter Mission.
Three cross-cutting science themes identified by the NASA-
chartered science definition team would drive the proposed
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter science investigations. The themes are
to evaluate the degree to which subsurface oceans are present on
these worlds; to study the chemical composition of the moons,
including organic materials, and the surface processes that
affect them; and to scrutinize the entire Jupiter system,
particularly the interactions between Jupiter and the moons'
atmospheres and interiors.
"The scientists have told us what they want," said John Casani,
project manager for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission at JPL.
"When you consider the five-to-eight year trip to Jupiter, going
from one moon to the next, not only flying by but orbiting each
moon, this will require a unique nuclear power and electric
propulsion system. The large amount of power required for
electric propulsion could be used in orbit to power a
significantly enhanced suite of instruments not even conceivable
with previous power systems."
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission is part of NASA's Project
Prometheus, a program studying a series of initiatives to develop
power systems and technologies for space exploration. The
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, managed by JPL, would be the first
NASA mission utilizing nuclear electric propulsion, which would
enable the spacecraft to orbit each of these icy worlds to
perform extensive investigations of their makeup, history and
potential for sustaining life. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a
division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter mission for NASA's
Office of Exploration Systems, Washington, D.C.
For more information visit:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/prometheus.htm
or:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/index.cfm
