TIM FURNISS / LONDON & GRAHAM WARWICK / WASHINGTON DC
Programme centres on mission to search for hidden oceans on Jupiter's moons
NASA plans to boost funding for solar system exploration, with a new mission to look for hidden oceans on Jupiter's moons as the centrepiece of its programme. The nuclear-powered Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) could be launched in 2011 to search for evidence of global saltwater oceans beneath the surface of Callisto, Europa and Ganymede.
The European Space Agency (ESA), meanwhile, has selected Astrium to build its next planetary explorer, the Venus Express. The EADS subsidiary has been awarded an €82.4 million ($89 million) contract to build the craft, which will reuse the design of the Mars Express orbiter to be launched in June.
The Venus Express is to be launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in 2005, on a Starsem Soyuz-Fregat booster. The first European spacecraft to explore Venus, it is expected to reach the planet in five months and conduct a two-year orbital mission to investigate the Venusian atmosphere up to an altitude of 250km (155 miles).
NASA's fiscal year 2004 budget request increases funding for solar system exploration by 30%, to $1.36 billion. This is scheduled to exceed $2.5 billion by 2008, largely to fund the JIMO. The proposed Jupiter mission accounts for two-thirds of the $3 billion NASA plans to spend over five years on Project Prometheus, its initiative to develop nuclear propulsion and power systems for spacecraft.
The orbiter would be the first spacecraft to use electric propulsion powered by a nuclear fission reactor. After launch into high Earth orbit, ion thrusters would take the craft into orbit around Jupiter, from where the JIMO would orbit Callisto, then Ganymede and Europa. The reactor would generate enough electricity to power a heavy payload of instruments, including a radar to map surface ice thickness.
NASA plans to equip the JIMO with an optical communications system to be developed under a second initiative to be launched in 2004, and funded at $233 million over five years. Optical communications would dramatically increase data rates. NASA plans to demonstrate optical communications in 2009 using a satellite orbiting Mars and relaying data to high-altitude Earth balloon receivers.
Source: Flight International
