Title: Saturn ice ring exploration network mission platform

Authors: Eric M. Shear; John E. Moores

Addresses: York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada ' Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science (CRESS), York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada

Abstract: SIREN is a proposed mission concept that would demonstrate the use of small spacecraft at the rings of Saturn to quantify the ring environment and study the composition and dynamics of the ring particles. Many existing small spacecraft technologies are leveraged to make this mission possible. SIREN consists of several daughtercraft deployed from and networked to a mothership in hover-orbit over the ring plane. The mothership is based on the Saturn Ring Observer spacecraft (Nicholson et al., 2010). This paper details the mission objectives, the science requirements, the overall mission design and the science payloads of the daughtercraft.

Keywords: CubeSats; spacecraft networks; small spacecraft; Saturn; rings; planetary science.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSPACESE.2018.090547

International Journal of Space Science and Engineering, 2018 Vol.5 No.1, pp.16 - 42

Received: 07 Jul 2017
Accepted: 13 Oct 2017

Published online: 20 Mar 2018 *

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