Nix
Pluto and Charon
Frozen carbon monoxide
Plains
Pluto and Charon
Frozen carbon monoxide
Plains
So how much of the surface of Pluto is covered by the flyby ? I'd say 70% ?
I'd say about 70%, yeah.
Ok so lets launch another one and fly by the other side to get the 30% remaining.
Nah, if we go back, we should aim for orbit.
Ok so lets launch another one and fly by the other side to get the 30% remaining.
It would be great if it were possible to design "split" probes that could separate into two just before encounter to get imagery from both sides of the planet. They wouldn't necessarily have to be two identical capability probes. One "mother" probe would have the power to talk to Earth and would take images on one side. The other "daughter" probe could be much smaller, having just enough stored power to snap a few pictures pictures and to transmit them to the mother probe for transfer to earth.
Love the idea ... Not only that, but if you use a laser link between the two, you can also double that into a laser altimeter / gravimeter experiment by pointing the lasers at the surface during flyby and doing a whisk-broom scanning pattern, and by measuring precisely the variation of separation of the mothership / probes pre-encounter and post-encounter... Heck even do atmospheric profiling, like slicing an egg with a metal wire!
Let's write a project proposal and get some grants
Power and weight are your enemies here. The more power-consuming features (lasers, etc) you add to the daughter probe, the more mass is needed, and the tyranny of the rocket equation bites you. You eventually get to the point where two full probes are needed.
My thought was really something more throw away - a small spherical probe, insulated with aerogel, with a battery, a small reaction wheel for orientation, a camera, and a low power radio. No RTG, so survival is limited by how long you can keep the electronics warm enough to work out in the Kuiper belt. Separate it maybe a day before encounter so it can transit the far side, have it take a few pictures and transmit them to the mother ship before it succumbs to the cold.
Maybe you could arrange a simple retro-reflector on the daughter probe and do the laser ranging and atmosphere profiling using a laser on the mother probe.
Separate it maybe a day before encounter so it can transit the far side, have it take a few pictures and transmit them to the mother ship before it succumbs to the cold.
Due to the high flyby speed (a dozen of km/sec) and the usually low separation speed between spacecrafts (few meters/sec), the resulting trajectory of the twin probes actually don't diverge so much. The two probably will pass above the same side of Pluto, unless the flyby is very narrow (not desirable because of the high speed, which would make observations difficult). And even in this case, the second probe probably will impact the surface. Likely, the separation must occur well before the flyby - several weeks, IMHO.
Brilliant concept, anyway.