The future European large-class science mission with the theme "Moons of the giant planets"
- Paper ID
97395
- DOI
- author
- company
European Space Agency (ESA); Starion Group
- country
The Netherlands
- year
2025
- abstract
The Voyage 2050 Senior Committee Report [1] recommended that the next European Large-class (L4) mission following LISA and NewAthena shall cover the science theme “Moons of the Giant Planets”. Since the report was published, several different mission scenarios have been studied internally by ESA. All studies had the same constraint to investigate a worst-case scenario: the mission had to be a European-only mission with no international contributions and had to be feasible without the use of radioisotope power systems. Thus, regardless of the final target, the orbiter would require using very large solar arrays to close the demanding energy budget in the outer solar system and the mission would have to launch on a European rock-et. Several different potential targets have been considered and explored in ESA’s internal studies, from the Jovian moons of Europa and Ganymede to the Saturnian moons of Enceladus and Titan. To support the work of ESA and provide guidance on the scientific priorities, an “L4 Science Expert Team” was setup in parallel to the ESA activities. The team concluded that Enceladus should be the highest priority target for the L4 mission and that a lander should be included in the mission concept. Following this recommendation, the mission scenario being studied includes a tour of the Saturnian system with up to 50 moon fly-bys and 10 separate encounters with Enceladus to sample its plumes. The mission ends with the orbiter in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO). From the NRHO the orbiter releases the lander for a soft landing on the south pole of Enceladus, close to its plumes. To allow enough mass for a large lander, two separate Ariane 64 launches have been baselined for the mission. The orbiter and lander are to be launched on one A64 and the SEP stage and a chemical propulsion (CP) kick-stage on another A64. The two stacks will then rendezvous and dock in near Earth orbit. The CP stage is then jettisoned after providing sufficient acceleration to allow the SEP-orbiter-lander stack to transfer directly into the first SEP arc. Saturn is reached nine years later after three separate SEP arches, spanning four years. To further refine the early mission concepts and explore the trade-offs of the double launch scenario, ESA has tasked two industrial partners in two parallel studies. The presentation will provide an overview of the latest status from the ongoing studies and outline what work lies ahead.