A paper co-authored by IU Astronomy graduate student Brandon Radzom describing a novel NASA mission concept - THUNDER, an orbiter at Saturn's moon, Titan - has just been published to the Planetary Science Journal.
THUNDER is a geophysical mission with the goal of determining how Titan's organic cycle has coevolved with its interior and atmosphere, and how these processes inform the surface as we see it today. The proposed mission's extensive surface mapping would help scientists better contextualize this enigmatic moon among other ocean worlds and understand its potential dynamic habitability. The full paper detailing the THUNDER mission can be found here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/PSJ/ad973e
The THUNDER mission concept was developed as part of the Summer 2023 Planetary Science Summer School (PSSS) program hosted by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). PSSS is a 3-month program designed to prepare early-career scientists and engineers for leadership in space missions. Throughout the first 10 weeks of the program, Brandon and his cohort received remote training from NASA mentors on the various aspects of mission design, including life cycle, costs, schedule, engineering, and hypothesis-driven science. Simultaneously, they worked together to develop a novel New Frontiers-class (~$1 billion) robotic space mission in direct response to the New Frontiers 4 Announcement of Opportunity and the Planetary Science Decadal Survey. During the culminating week of the program, they worked with JPL's "Team-X" mission design experts at JPL in Pasadena, CA to finalize the concept, ultimately presenting it before a NASA review board.
While this concept is only preliminary by nature, requiring further experimental studies and modeling to become fully viable, Brandon and his team hope this work provides a compelling science case for Titan and a useful reference for future planned missions.
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