Aus dem Scientific American. Vorschläge für Sondenmissionen jenseits des Sonnensystems.

Zitat von January 6, 2022

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First announced in 2019 but dreamed of for decades, today the Interstellar Probe concept reflects the labors of more than 1,000 scientists working across the past few years to formalize the mission’s design, instruments and scientific goals. Last month, at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in New Orleans, the APL team unveiled the mission concept report that arose from these discussions—a nearly 500-page study seeking to bring the Interstellar Probe one major step closer to reality. And it is not alone: efforts in China are underway to launch an independent but equally enthralling interstellar mission, currently referred to as “Interstellar Express.”

“Interstellar Probe will allow us to understand where we come from and where we are going,” says Brandt, who is the proposal’s project scientist. “It is a mission to go beyond the boundaries of the heliosphere, the vast magnetic bubble that encases the entire solar system.”

Interstellar Probe would be a dedicated mission to explore this far-flung locale—designed for liftoff in the 2030s, with a launch year of 2036 used as a baseline in the study. Launching on a powerful rocket such as NASA’s upcoming Space Launch System (SLS) and weighing 860 kilograms (about 1,900 pounds), similar to the Voyagers, Interstellar Probe would leave Earth at a speed of about 60,000 kilometers per hour, faster than any spacecraft in history, eclipsing the record of about 43,000 kilometers per hour set by the New Horizons spacecraft on its way to Pluto. At such speeds, Interstellar Probe would reach Jupiter in seven months, arrive at the heliopause in 15 years—compared with 35 years for Voyager 1—and overtake the Voyager spacecraft by the end of the century.

“I’m a strong supporter,” says Don Gurnett, a professor emeritus at the University of Iowa and former principal investigator of the plasma wave instruments on both Voyager spacecraft. “Voyager 1 will probably operate another 10 years and be at 165 AU. It’s not far enough out. We would like to go [farther] into the pristine interstellar medium.”

The overall goal is to design a mission that lasts at least 50 years, reaching a distance of more than 300 AU that time and then progressing well into interstellar space, as much as 1,000 AU from Earth, in nearly 150 years.
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Meanwhile the Interstellar Express mission China is considering would see two—or even three—spacecraft launched into interstellar space. One would go toward the supposed “nose” of the heliosphere, and another would travel toward the “tail.” The potential third spacecraft would possibly travel in a lateral direction, much like the general trajectory planned for Interstellar Probe. Initially planned for launch as soon as 2024, China’s spacecraft could then reach 100 AU by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, but the coronavirus pandemic has so slowed development that this target liftoff date may no longer be feasible.

Like Interstellar Probe, the two or three spacecraft would be equipped with ENA imagers to provide snapshots of our heliosphere, along with instruments to measure the local magnetic field and plasma density, among others. “We have similar instruments,” says Linghua Wang of Peking University, who is part of Interstellar Express’s ENA imager team. “But the instrument specifics could be different.”

Having these spacecraft complementing Interstellar Probe would be a boon for scientists hoping to study interstellar space. “It’s better to have more,” Wang says. “I hope we can have four spacecraft or more.”

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...e-solar-system/