Author Topic: Mission Planning  (Read 4412 times)

Cosmoneer

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Mission Planning
« on: April 05, 2017, 05:20:55 PM »
We often overlook the complexities associated with planning a mission in space, especially an interplanetary mission.  So many factors affect one another, where do you start?


  • How close is Earth to the planet we want to visit?
  • How long will it take to develop the systems (scientific, navigational, propulsion, software, etc) we'll fly on the spacecraft?
  • Where do we find the people and the skills to tackle all the problems we'll encounter building it?
  • Who will pay for it?
  • What launch vehicle can we use?  Will it be custom built, or an existing solution?
  • What is the maximum weight we can send?
  • What sacrifices can we make due to weight/size constraints, yet still accomplish our mission?
  • What happens if we miss our launch window?
  • Who will talk to our spacecraft and receive it's signals when it is in space?

This is just a small list of the many items that affect a mission from the beginning.

Some of the points we want to focus on are mission constraints such as weight, size and hardware...