Moonraker - an Enceladus Multiple Flyby Mission Submitted to the ESA 2021 M-class Call
- 1Aix Marseille Université, Institut Origines, CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France (olivier.mousis@lam.fr)
- 2Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Institut Origines, PIIM, Marseille, France
- 3Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, Univ. Paris Saclay, CNRS , France
- 4IRAP/CNRS, PEPS, Toulouse, France
- 5GSMA, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France UMR 7331, CNRS, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, Campus Sciences Exactes et Naturelles, BP 1039, F-51100 Reims, France
- 6Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Justus-von-Liebig-Weg 3, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
- 7Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Berlin, Germany
- 8University La Sapienza of Rome, via Eudossiana 18, 00186, Roma, Italy
- 9LASP, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA
- 10Imperial College London, London, UK
- 11Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- 12LPC2E-CNRS, Orléans cedex 2, France
- 13Universität Bern, Physikalisches Institut, Weltraum und Planetologie, Sidlerstr. 5, 3012, Bern, Switzerland
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
Context: Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn, possesses an internal water ocean and geysers expelling ocean material into space. Cassini investigations indicated the ocean could be habitable and has a complex interaction with the rocky core. Further investigation of the composition of the plume formed by the geysers is necessary to fully understand the ocean, its possible habitability, and what it tells us about Enceladus’ origin.
Mission profile: Moonraker has been proposed as an ESA M-class mission designed to orbit Saturn and perform multiple flybys of Enceladus, focusing on traversals of the plume. Moonraker consists of an ESA-built platform, with strong heritage from JUICE (and Mars Sample Return for solar power), and carrying a suite of instruments dedicated to plume and surface analysis. The nominal Moonraker mission includes a 23-flyby segment, with the possibility of expanding the mission with additional similar segments, depending on available resources.
Objectives and expected impact: Moonraker is devoted to the investigation of i) the habitability conditions of present- day Enceladus and its internal ocean, ii) the mechanisms at play for the communication between the internal ocean and the surface of the South Polar Terrain, and iii) the formation conditions of the moon in the context of the formation of the Saturnian system. Moonraker, thanks to state-of-the-art instruments that represent a vast improvement over Cassini’s payload, would quantify the abundance of key species in the plume, isotopic ratios, and physical parameters of the plume and the surface. Such a mission would allow to solve the standing questions left by Cassini on the aforementioned topics as well as pave the way for a possible future lander mission.
D.H. Atkinson, M. Berthomier, J. Brucato, S. Barabash, M. Cable, J. Carter, S. Cazaux, A. Coustenis, G. Danger, V. Dehant, T. Fornaro, P. Garnier, T. Gautier, O. Groussin, L. Hadid, J.-C. Ize, I. Kolmasova, J.-P. Lebreton, S. Le Maistre, E. Lellouch, J.I. Lunine, K.E. Mandt, Z. Martins, D. Mimoun, Q. Nenon, G.M. Munoz Caro, P. Rannou, H. Rauer, P. Schmitt-Kopplin, M. Simons, K. Stephan, T. Van Holst, J. Vaverka, M. Wieser, L. Wörner.
How to cite: Mousis, O., Bouquet, A., Langevin, Y., André, N., Durry, G., Hartogh, P., Helbert, J., Iess, L., Kempf, S., Masters, A., Postberg, F., Renard, J.-B., Vernazza, P., Vorburger, A., and Wurz, P. and the Moonraker team: Moonraker - an Enceladus Multiple Flyby Mission Submitted to the ESA 2021 M-class Call, Europlanet Science Congress 2022, Granada, Spain, 18–23 Sep 2022, EPSC2022-329, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-329, 2022.
