Revolutionary systems and technologies for missions to the outer planets

The Advanced Deep Space System Development Program is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA and is also called X2000. X2000 is organized to create advanced flight and ground systems for the exploration of the outer planets and beyond; it has been created to develop the engineering elements of flight and ground systems. Payloads will be developed by another team. Each X2000 delivery gets its requirements from a set of planned missions, or "mission customers". The X2000 First Delivery Project supports missions to the Sun (to 4 solar radii), Europa (looking for a liquid ocean), Mars (in support of several Mars missions including a sample return), a comet (including a sample return), and Pluto followed by a trip info the Kuiper belt. This set of missions leads to some outstanding requirements: 1. Long-life (10-12 years) 2. Total Ionizing Dose of 4 Mrad (for a Europa Orbiter) 3. Average power consumption less than or equal to 150 Watts 4. Autonomous operations that result in an extreme reduction in operations costs This paper describes the X2000 first delivery and its technologies following a brief overview of the program. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.