Mission to Pluto Using the satellites and missions described here, plan a mission to Pluto and choose the instruments.

The Solar System Mercury Venus Earth/Moon Mars Asteroids Jupiter/moons Saturn/Titan Uranus Neptune Pluto

The Moon

Moon + SMART1 SMART1 - an ESA mission to survey the Moon, for launch in 2003 (August) SMART-1 orbits the Moon Experiments include: cameras what is the Moon made from (rock composition)? is there water?

Apollo astronauts collected rocks from the Moon Experiments included temperature, gravity changes, moonquakes, rock composition

Mercury BepiColombo planned for 2011 Experiments include: lander camera Mercury’s magnetic field surface feature mapper (radar) solar wind effect on Mercury seismometer for Mercury-quakes Picture from Mariner 10, taken in 1974

Venus Venus Express, due for launch in 2005 Experiments include: temperature changes in pressure of atmosphere composition of atmosphere effect of solar wind on atmosphere

Mars Express + Beagle 2 Due for launch in 2003 (June) Experiments include: cameras atmosphere composition surface composition (water?) effect of the solar wind on atmosphere lander

Jupiter and Almathea with the NASA Galileo satellite

Jupiter’s moons Ganymede - a rocky core (as big as the Moon) + ice - largest moon in Solar System Callisto - rock + ice - with an ocean underneath the surface? Io - with the most active volcanoes in the Solar System Europa - an icy surface - with an ocean underneath? Galileo satellite from NASA, looking at temperature, composition, dust particles

Mission to Europa NASA’s plan to look at the surface of the moon of Jupiter and under the surface

Saturn seen by Cassini The Cassini satellite was launched in 1997, and carries the Huygens lander. In 2004, Cassini will go into orbit around Saturn, and the Huygens lander will land on Saturn’s moon, Titan.

Cassini/Huygens The experiments include: cameras dust, surface, and atmosphere analysers composition of the rings temperature and pressure (Titan) surface features (oceans?) (Titan) seismometer and effect of solar wind lander

Asteroids and comets Gaspera seen by Galileo Craters on Eros seen by NEAR- Shoemaker Borelly seen by Deep Space 1 Experiments include cameras, dust particle analysers, dust composition

Rosetta – mission to a comet Rosetta will be launched in 2004 by ESA Experiments include: cameras surface features and composition studying water and molecules magnetic field and dust particles

Deep Impact A NASA mission to a comet, to be launched in 2004 to comet Tempel-1. When it arrives a large ‘impactor’ will be launched to crash into the comet, and the bits that fly off will be analysed to see what the comet is made of.

Genesis/Stardust Stardust Genesis Genesis was launched by NASA in 2001 to travel nearer to the Sun and collect particles of the solar wind, then return to Earth in Stardust was launched by NASA in 1999 to chase comet Wild, collect particles from it and return to Earth in The particles will be studied in the laboratory on Earth.

Pluto

Design your mission Possible instruments: –cameras –thermometer –rock and dust analyser –gas analysers –water detector –particle detector –spectrometers –surface structure (oceans/rocks) –magnetic field measurer –solar activity monitor –solar wind monitor –gravity field measurer Lander – extra instruments: surface details camera rock analyser scoop microscope Lander – extra problems: weight parachute or fuel power source