Abstract
Neptune’s moon Triton is a fascinating object, a dynamic moon with an atmosphere, and geysers. Given the availability of volatiles (primarily nitrogen ice) on the surface a concept study was performed to see how these ices could be used as propellant to hop across the surface and explore the many different terrains of the moon. Termed Triton Hopper, the Phase 1 mission concept study was funded by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in 2015.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wished to thank the following team members both for their written contributions to this work: Julie Kleinhenz, David Chato, Ian Dux, Jeffrey Woytach, Waldy Sjauw, Laura Burke, Mike Martini, James Fittje, John Gyekenyesi, Tony Colozza, Paul Schmitz, Hector Dominguez, Robert Jones, Tom Packard, Elizabeth Turnbull, Tom Parkey. Other team members who contributed to the concept include: Les Balkanyi, Stan Grisnik, Vikram Shyam, Ian Dux, Mike Bur, Elizabeth Turnbull, Tom Parkey, and Anita Tenteris.
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Oleson, S.R., Landis, G. (2018). Triton Hopper: Exploring Neptune’s Captured Kuiper Belt Object. In: Badescu, V., Zacny, K. (eds) Outer Solar System. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73845-1_9
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