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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS1982

International solar system exploration - Opportunities and obstacles

A review is conducted of the exploration of the solar system carried out with the aid of various types of spacecraft during the past two decades, taking into account also space missions planned for thy next few years. A wealth of information has been obtained regarding the planets and their satellites. However, there remain many important questions concerning the solar system, and a continuation of space exploration for the solution of these questions appears highly desirable, particularly when the comparatively little cost of these missions is taken into account. However, major fiscal limitations within the U.S. economy have led to pressure to postpone any new solar system exploration projects unless there can be major reductions in their cost. A special committee has been studying the options for future low-cost solar system exploration missions, giving attention also to some options for international implementation. Various aspects of joint space projects are examined.

Moore, J. W.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Grading NASA's Solar System Exploration Program: A Midterm Report

The Committee on Assessing the Solar System Exploration Program has reviewed NASA's progress to date in implementing the recommendations made in the National Research Council's (NRC's) solar system exploration decadal survey covering the period 2003-2013, New Frontiers in the Solar System, and in its Mars Architecture report, Assessment of NASA s Mars Architecture 2007-2016. The committee assessed NASA's progress with respect to each individual recommendation in these two reports, assigning an academic-style grade, explaining the rationale for the grade and trend, and offering recommendations for improvement. The committee generally sought to develop recommendations in cases where it determined that the grade, the trend, or both were worrisome and that the achievement of a decadal survey recommendation would require some kind of corrective action on NASA's part. This usually meant that the committee sought to offer a recommendation when the grade was a "C" or lower. However, the committee did offer recommendations in connection with some higher grades when it believed that minor corrective action was possible and desirable. More importantly, the committee did not offer recommendations for some of the activities given lower grades, particularly in the enabling technologies area (Chapter 6), because the committee determined that only the restoration of funding and the development of a strategic technology development program would solve these problems.

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NASA NTRS1998

Mission to the Solar System: Exploration and Discovery. A Mission and Technology Roadmap

Solar System exploration addresses some of humanity's most fundamental questions: How and when did life form on Earth? Does life exist elsewhere in the Solar System or in the Universe? - How did the Solar System form and evolve in time? - What can the other planets teach us about the Earth? This document describes a Mission and Technology Roadmap for addressing these and other fundamental Solar System Questions. A Roadmap Development Team of scientists, engineers, educators, and technologists worked to define the next evolutionary steps in in situ exploration, sample return, and completion of the overall Solar System survey. Guidelines were to "develop aa visionary, but affordable, mission and technology development Roadmap for the exploration of the Solar System in the 2000 to 2012 timeframe." The Roadmap provides a catalog of potential flight missions. (Supporting research and technology, ground-based observations, and laboratory research, which are no less important than flight missions, are not included in this Roadmap.)

Gulkis, S.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Future NASA plans for exobiology and solar system exploration

The prominence of exobiology as a part of the NASA program in solar system exploration reached its peak during the Viking missions of the mid-1970's. Even before those missions were finished, the Exobiology Program had been transferred out of the Division responsible for solar system exploration, and many of the direct ties to future missions became more difficult to make, providing a bureaucratic impediment to the conduct of exobiology research in space. Early in 1993, the Exobiology Program was brought back in to the Solar System Exploration Division, as an integral part of NASA's program to study this and other solar systems. As such, the Program stands to gain from an overall broad investment in missions that will study Mars, small bodies such as asteroids and comets, and outer planetary bodies such as Saturn, Titan, and even Pluto. Additional opportunities may be forthcoming on the Moon and elsewhere in Earth-orbit. Ground-based studies will continue to be an important foundation for work in space, while additional effects will be continue to use ground-based astronomical instruments to study other planetary systems, and to search for life on planets around other stars. This paper provides a current planning and budgetary prospectus on the future of Exobiology in NASA.

Rummel, John D.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Solar System Exploration, 1995-2000

Goals for planetary exploration during the next decade include: (1) determine how our solar system formed, and understand whether planetary systems are a common phenomenon through out the cosmos; (2) explore the diverse changes that planets have undergone throughout their history and that take place at present, including those that distinguish Earth as a planet; (3) understand how life might have formed on Earth, whether life began anywhere else in the solar system, and whether life (including intelligent beings) might be a common cosmic phenomenon; (4) discover and investigate natural phenomena that occur under conditions not realizable in laboratories; (5) discover and inventory resources in the solar system that could be used by human civilizations in the future; and (6) make the solar system a part of the human experience in the same way that Earth is, and hence lay the groundwork for human expansion into the solar system in the coming century. The plan for solar system exploration is motivated by these goals as well as the following principle: The solar system exploration program will conduct flight programs and supporting data analysis and scientific research commensurate with United States leadership in space exploration. These programs and research must be of the highest scientific merit, they must be responsive to public excitement regarding planetary exploration, and they must contribute to larger national goals in technology and education. The result will be new information, which is accessible to the public, creates new knowledge, and stimulates programs of education to increase the base of scientific knowledge in the general public.

Squyres, S.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Optics for future solar system exploration

The optics technology necessary for future solar system exploration is discussed. To satisfy the various mission objectives, optical components need to be of low weight, provide adequate spatial resolution and mapping coverage, provide necessary spectral resolution, provide means to perform adaptable mapping spectrometry, operate under low light levels, provide color images of high fidelity and operate under high temperatures. Future near-infrared mapping spectrometers are examined, and the use of focal-plane detectors to improve their sensitivity is discussed.

Norris, D. D.↗
NASA NTRS1982

Mariner Mark II - An approach to solar system exploration in the 1990's

Significant progress has been made in the twenty-plus years since the start of direct solar system exploration. NASA through its Solar System Exploration Committee (SSEC), has been developing guidelines and plans for continuing this exploration. The Mariner Mark II (MMII) development project has been initiated as one element of this planning to focus primarily on imaging class, deep space missions at minimum cost. A description is presented of concepts for a new spacecraft and ground system capability, uniquely focused on the selected mission scenarios and lower cost approaches of MMII. A summary of Mariner Mark II candidate missions is provided, taking into account a comet rendezvous, a comet elemental sample return, main-belt asteroid flybys and rendezvous, a Saturn orbiter, Titan or Saturn flyby and probe, Uranus flyby and probe, Neptune flyby and probe, and a Mars Orbiter.

Heacock, R. L.↗
NASA NTRS2005

NASA Outer Solar System Exploration

A viewgraph presentation on NASA's Outer Solar System Exploration is shown. The topics include: 1) Completed Missions; 2) Operating Missions; 3) Missions in Development; and 4) Future Missions.

Bergstralh, Jay T.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Planetary exploration through year 2000: An augmented program. Part two of a report by the Solar System Exploration Committee of the NASA Advisory Council

In 1982, the NASA Solar System Exploration Committee (SSEC) published a report on a Core Program of planetary missions, representing the minimum-level program that could be carried out in a cost effective manner, and would yield a continuing return of basic scientific results. This is the second part of the SSEC report, describing missions of the highest scientific merit that lie outside the scope of the previously recommended Core Program because of their cost and technical challenge. These missions include the autonomous operation of a mobile scientific rover on the surface of Mars, the automated collection and return of samples from that planet, the return to Earth of samples from asteroids and comets, projects needed to lay the groundwork for the eventual utilization of near-Earth resources, outer planet missions, observation programs for extra-solar planets, and technological developments essential to make these missions possible.

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NASA NTRS1976

OAST Space Theme Workshop. Volume 2: Theme summary. 4: Solar system exploration (no. 10). A: Statement of theme: B. 26 April 1976 Presentation. C. Summary. D. Initiative actions (form 5)

Major strategies for exploring the solar system focus on the return of information and the return of matter. Both the planetary exploration facility, and an orbiting automated space station, and the sample return and exploration facility have similar requirements. The single most essential need to enable intensive study of the outer solar system is nuclear propulsion and power capability. New initiatives in 1978 related to the reactor, data and sample acquisition and return, navigation, and environmental protection are examined.

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NASA NTRS1986

Solar system exploration

Two fundamental goals lie at the heart of U.S. solar system exploration efforts: first, to characterize the evolution of the solar system; second, to understand the processes which produced life. Progress in planetary science is traced from Newton's definition of the principles of gravitation through a variety of NASA planetary probes in orbit, on other planets and traveling beyond the solar system. It is noted that most of the planetary data collected by space probes are always eventually applied to improving the understanding of the earth, moon, Venus and Mars, the planets of greatest interest to humans. Significant data gathered by the Mariner, Viking, Apollo, Pioneer, and Voyager spacecraft are summarized, along with the required mission support capabilities and mission profiles. Proposed and planned future missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, the asteroids and for a comet rendzvous are described.

Briggs, Geoffrey A.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Integrated Solar System Exploration Education and Public Outreach: Theme, Products and Activities

NASA's Solar System Exploration Program is entering an unprecedented period of exploration and discovery. Its goal is to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system and life within it. SSE missions are operating or in development to study the far reaches of our solar system and beyond. These missions proceed in sequence for each body from reconnaissance flybys through orbiters and landers or rovers to sample returns. SSE research programs develop new instruments, analyze mission data or returned samples, and provide experimental or theoretical models to aid in interpretation.

Lowes, Leslie↗