The development of the Ares V launch vehicle will provide levels of performance unseen since the days of Apollo. This capability, like the Saturn V before it, is being developed primarily for crewed lunar missions. However, the tremendous jump in performance offered by the Ares V launch system has tremendous potential for the furtherance of robotic solar system exploration missions as well. Preliminary performance assessments indicate that Ares V could deliver 5 times the payload to Mars as compared to the most capable US expendable launch vehicle available today. Beyond Mars, the outer planets offer a number of high-priority investigations with compelling science. Presently, missions to these destinations are only achievable using indirect flights with gravity assist trajectories and, in many cases, suffer from long flight times. An Ares V with an upper stage could capture these missions using direct flights with shorter interplanetary transfer times that would enable extensive in situ investigations and possibly the return of samples to Earth. This paper lays out an estimate of Ares V performance for moderate and high C3 missions, and goes on to discuss a range of revolutionary mission concepts that could be enabled by this significant in-crease in launch capability.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Ares V: Application to Solar System Scientific Exploration


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    International Astronautical Congress 2008 ; 2008 ; Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom


    Publication date :

    2008-09-29


    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English





    Ares I and Ares V First Stage - Powering Exploration

    Priskos, Alex S. / Williams, Thomas J. | NTRS | 2008




    Ares I First Stage: Powering Exploration

    Tiller, Bruce K. | NTRS | 2009