The Ice Giants, Uranus and Neptune, represent a largely unexplored, interstitial class of planetary objects that fit between the Gas Giants and the smaller terrestrial worlds, such as Earth, in terms of their size and elemental composition and are therefore a missing link in our understanding of extrasolar planetary evolution. The scientific potential of a mission to the Ice Giants is well...
Uranus and Neptune are the only two exemplars of ice giant planets in the Solar System. This planetary class is currently not well understood, as the models for their interior structure cannot be fully explained by observations. As opposed to planets classified as gas giants, ice giants are mainly composed of volatile substances heavier than hydrogen and helium, called \textit{ices}, in their...
Entry into the giant planets, the four large gaseous planets out past the asteroid belt, is rare and dangerous due to their large size and their distance from the Earth. Their hydrogen/helium atmospheres also make their entry environment completely different to entry into other planets in the solar system.
Due to the current interest in sending a probe mission to Uranus, giant planet entry...
An aerothermodynamic analysis of representative aerocapture and entry flows in Neptune is discussed in this work. Direct entry and aerocapture trajectories are taken from the literature, and peak heating points (18 km/s at 80km altitude for a direct entry, 29km/s at 130km altitude for an aerocapture trajectory) are accordingly selected. Two standard 60º and 45º sphere-cone shapes are...
Introduction:
The Giant planets are key destinations of interest to the planetary science community for their potential to provide insight into the formation and evolution of our Solar System, as well as extrasolar planetary systems. To date, the Galileo atmospheric probe is the only purpose-built entry probe to a Giant planet. Post-flight analysis of Galileo’s performance showed that...
