back to article ROBOT SEEDS to be scattered into upper atmosphere of JUPITER: NASA scheme

Jupiter and Saturn - mighty gas giants of the Outer System beyond the asteroid belt. How to explore them, given that their lower atmospheres are a roiling, superheated, overpressurised hell? Answer: flying robots which would use the energy of the medium in which they travel to stay high up in the survivable layer. The so- …

  1. Kharkov
    Holmes

    Sounds great! But Bandwidth, bandwidth...

    Floating probes to study and report on Jupiter's atmosphere? Sounds great, really, but isn't it time we saw some proposals to increase the available bandwidth of the returning signals?

    Given the fairly-long lead time between someone coming up with an idea, studying it, testing it, getting mission approval, building it, waiting for a launcher slot, and then journey time - start (the idea) to finish (arriving in the target planet's orbit) being ten years (or more!) - isn't it time that we, or someone, got started on a high-bandwidth signal relay?

    I'm sure others can comment on this but I'd suggest the inner Lagrange point, to gather signals from closer to the planet and then relay them on to Earth. After all, this isn't the 80's or 90's anymore. Time to get off dial-up...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sounds great! But Bandwidth, bandwidth...

      Ever thought of applying for a job at NASA Kharkov?

      I'm sure they would snap you up...

      1. Kharkov
        Trollface

        Re: Sounds great! But Bandwidth, bandwidth...

        I think John Oliver, in one of his last bits on The Daily Show, pigeonholed me very well. He was talking about Elon Musk suggesting that people build a fast-transit system for California but added that HE wasn't going to get involved. As John Olive said, "Somebody should go off and cure cancer! I'd do it myself but I'm more of an ideas man!"

        But I WILL be cheering from the benches when they do it...

  2. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    Two problems: One solution

    1. Probes need to stay aloft

    2. Politicians

    Insert one or more (2) inside each (1)

    Hot air will do the rest.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Two problems: One solution

      The same issues apply to flying comms equipment to the Lagrange points (which are starting to get crowded).

      The idea is nice by the way, but the practicality of flying a big-ass array out there and ensuring it will work reliably is well beyond our current technology.

      It's more practical to build 30-50m dishes on the ground.

      Falcon XX heavy might change that, along with some good robotics to assemble parts on-orbit.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Two problems: One solution

        The idea is nice by the way, but the practicality of flying a big-ass array out there and ensuring it will work reliably is well beyond our current technology."

        ISS solar arrays?

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: Two problems: One solution

          ISS solar arrays fold up like an accordian, are made of flat panels and aren't very large - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_system_of_the_International_Space_Station

          High gain parabolic dishes are a lot more complicated. Current large designs are built like umbrellas, but the largest ever flown was less than 10 metres when fully opened. You're limited not just in weight but also by maximum fairing diameter and length.

          The deep space network dishes currently used to talk to remote probes are 30-50m across.

          If you put some at a Lagrange point then you need to make it 110% reliable or develop technology for servicing missions. So far everything sent that far has been a one-way trip and less than a dozen manned craft have been beyond LEO - even GEO is currently unattainable as robotic servicing mission, let alone manned flight.

  3. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Power

    Although they can use Jupiter's winds to keep the craft aloft for weeks or months, what are the craft going to do for power? If they're going to be in Jupiter's atmosphere, surely solar power isn't going to cut it? And isn't Nasa running out of plutonium for deep-space probes?

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Power

      I think the idea is to use turbulence as a power source - probably something kind of like self-winding wristwatches, but maybe on a bigger scale.

      Must be a fascinating project. I really would like know how that idea cropped up, it's genius.

      The issue I see is that these probes won't be able to phone back home properly on their own. I think we'll need a comms satellite orbiting Jupiter to capture the signals and relay them back to Earth with a proper antenna.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Power

        "I think we'll need a comms satellite orbiting Jupiter"

        Yes, exactly the proposed scenario in the article.

    2. cray74

      Re: Power

      And isn't Nasa running out of plutonium for deep-space probes?

      Production has resumed and is scaling up.

      Additional, detailed reference delivered with a Wham. (Seriously, that's the NASA spokesman's name.)

  4. Mystic Megabyte

    Lightning

    You could easily make a blimp float forever in Jupiter's atmosphere but the part of most likely to be struck by lightning would be the radio antenna. Solve that problem and we're good to go.

    https://soundcloud.com/nasa/voyager-lightning-on-jupiter

    1. ravenviz Silver badge
      Alien

      Re: Lightning

      Don't want to make them too large as they'll get attacked by the gas-filled denizens who evolved to survive perpetually aloft!

      1. Ermintrude
        Happy

        Re: Lightning

        Either attacked or humped

      2. oddie

        Re: Lightning

        No doubt some of the younger ones would have scars from their games of seeing who could descend the deepest into the gas layers

        1. ravenviz Silver badge
          Headmaster

          Re: Lightning

          Do the scars go away when they get older then?

    2. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Lightning

      "the part of most likely to be struck by lightning would be the radio antenna."

      Slot antennas are easy on blimps or aircraft skins and have been in service doing such things for more than 60 years without problems.

      https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QjYtNJZmWLEC&pg=PA809&lpg=PA809&dq=aircraft+slot+antenna&source=bl&ots=Xr7WtATA_-&sig=9KZ7y3q9_JERriO4_wSdWXt2DuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEEQ6AEwCGoVChMIl9yAoJT-xgIVyzwUCh143wk1#v=onepage&q=aircraft%20slot%20antenna&f=false

  5. Ermintrude

    No doubt that "enriches our understanding of Earth's own weather and climate" will mean whatever it observes will be interpreted to support the AGW agenda.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Don't you just hate it when reality doesn't support your selfish worldview?

      1. Ermintrude

        I could be wrong ...

        My "selfish worldview" happens to include the opinion that AGW has been promoted by wealthy western industrialists to exert geopolitical pressure on the developing world in order to retard their progress out of poverty.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: I could be wrong ...

          Which is a wonderful lie you tell yourself so that you can go on living a wasteful, energy intensive life as inexpensively as possible without any guilt, feelings of remorse or need to think about the world we are leaving for future generations.

          Yeah, you're awesome. Fuck reality, you da goddamned man! Da goddamned man!

          1. Ermintrude

            Re: I could be wrong ...

            You are clearly deranged.

  6. Bleu

    'or too', think you meamt 'two'

    Are you using silly dictation software, can't spell, or very drunk?

    That is an awfully bad error.

    I like the idea of probes based on the aerodynamics of dandelion seeds dancing about in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter or Saturn, very poetic, but surely it raises problems in terms of signals and orientation?

    i agree with the OP who suggests a plain old blimp as a more practical solution.

    BTW, thanks to Opera and/or the Reg.for making it possible to log in from Opera Mini.

  7. PyLETS
    Alien

    Just the start

    Demonstrating the viability of such survivable "seeds" based on bouyancy and wind energy harvesting comes first. Then the 2nd generation needs the capacity to make more in their own likeness, with the 3rd generation able to communicate more intelligently, mutate and evolve. If so what's to stop the 4th generation launching space war on their creators ?

  8. E 2

    Make the little robots self replicating for better bang for the buck.

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