Abstract-Recent developments in high altitude balloon platform capabilities, specifically long duration flights in excess of 50 days at over 100,000 ft and precision pointing with performance at the arc sec level or better have raised the question whether this platform can be utilized for high-value planetary science observations. In January of 2012 a workshop was held at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio to explore what planetary science can be achieved utilizing such a platform. Over 40 science concepts were identified by the scientists and engineers attending the workshop. Those ideas were captured and then posted to a public website for all interested planetary scientists to review and give their comments. The results of the workshop, and subsequent community review, have demonstrated that this platform appears to have potential for high-value science at very competitive costs. Given these positive results, the assessment process was extended to include 1) examining, in more detail, the requirements for the gondola platform and the mission scenarios 2) identifying technical challenges and 3) developing one or more platform concepts in enough fidelity to enable accurate estimating of development and mission costs. This paper provides a review of the assessment, a summary of the achievable science and the challenges to make that science a reality with this platform.
Overview. A primary tool for studying icy bodies in the solar system is optical remote sensing. One focus of that research is inferring surface composition, since that may yield important clues about the formation and evolution of planetary satellites. In general, researchers can typically probe the very top layer of the surface (down to a mm or so) by these means. However, the uppermost part of a surface is typically exposed to solar UV, cosmic rays, and a local environment of plasma, energetic charged particles, and dust (cometary and other forms). Two processes that are important for this discussion are, additions to the surface (e.g., material from sources like Io's volcanoes that reach other bodies and solar wind ions) and weathering of the surface (e.g., physical and chemical changes as described in Johnson et al. 2004). Here, the latter includes all external driving such as sublimation and sputtering, and dust and cosmic ray impacts.
NASA and the planetary science community have been exploring the potential contributions of stratospheric balloons to decadal class planetary science. Previous studies of the ~200 questions raised in the Decadal Survey have identified about 45 topics that are potentially suitable for addressing by stratospheric balloon platforms. A stratospheric balloon mission was flown in the fall of 2014 called BOPPS, Balloon Observation Platform for Planetary Science. This mission observed a number of planetary targets including two Oort cloud comets. The optical system and instrumentation payload was able to provide unique measurements of the intended targets and increase our understanding of these primitive bodies and their implications for us here on Earth. This paper will discuss the mission, instrumentation and initial results and how these may contribute to the broader planetary science objectives of NASA and the scientific community. This paper will also identify how the instrument platform on BOPPS may be able to contribute to future balloon-based science. Finally the paper will address potential future enhancements and the expected science impacts should those enhancements be implemented.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.