Part 12 of 12 Parts
Sixteen research projects drawn from NASA, the space industry and academia will receive grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in order to study the feasibility of their concepts. Here are more of the projects:
16. Solar System Pony Express
Joshua Vander Hook
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Solar System Pony Express (SSPE) is a global, multi-spectral, high-resolution planetary surveyor supported by regular visits from a cycler satellite network to retrieve petabits of data for transmission to Earth. The “courier” satellites will utilize optical communication to receive between one and three petabits of data from the surveyor once a year. The couriers will then return to near Earth orbit where they can download the data quickly. By exploiting cyclers orbits, the couriers will need minimal onboard propulsion. They should be able to operate for decades as an augmentation to the Deep Space Network and a precursor to Human Exploration logistics network.