Background
NASA has identified Uranus as the likely target for its next flagship mission and aims to send an orbiting spacecraft and a planetary probe to investigate the planet in the late 2030s. These long duration, high cost, high visibility missions require significant planning to codify the science objectives, mission design, spacecraft bus and payload instruments. This project focuses on four SwRI instrument families with flight heritage and a novel imager and seeks to retire risks associated with the current designs and optimize the instruments for the Uranian system, increasing the chances of one or more successful proposals once the Announcement of Opportunity is released.
Approach
The project involves the development of five instruments over the next three years. The plasma suite team is focused on the reduction of technical resources and the first year has been devoted to the modeling and analysis of novel designs. The mass spectrometer (MS) team has focused on determining which of the available MS designs are most suitable to the mission in terms of performance vs. technical resources using simulations and laboratory tests. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team used this first year to characterize the performance of an updated design of its detector electronics after irradiation. The magnetometer (MAG) team is focusing on reducing power and mass requirements for their instrument and verifying its performance with a newly fabricated prototype. The Visible (VIS) imager undertook an extensive literature review to determine an optimal path forward for an imager and which technical aspects to prioritize in the design.
Accomplishments
Since project kickoff in February, the teams have made significant strides. All team members have presented posters and participated in the Uranus Orbiter and Probes workshop hosted by GSFC/APL. The plasma team is completing trade studies on current SwRI-based designs and identified a novel sensor head design which significantly reduces the size and power and completed several performance models. The MS team determined that the ZZTOF design best fit the mission and began updating the lab prototype to better characterize instrument performance characteristics. The UVS team identified a new amplifier to replace the obsolete component on heritage designs and started a radiation test on a batch of the components to verify their anticipated performance at Uranus. The MAG team has updated their design, procured a block of permalloy and is currently machining components for the prototype sensor. The VIS team made strides in determining a set of instrument requirements, filters, science objectives for the camera and been instrumental in coordinating a SwRI hosted Uranus Orbiter and Probe workshop slated for July 2025.