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Published July 1996 | public
Journal Article

The Suess-Urey mission (return of solar matter to Earth)

Abstract

The Suess-Urey (S-U) mission has been proposed as a NASA Discovery mission to return samples of matter from the Sun to the Earth for isotopic and chemical analyses in terrestrial laboratories to provide a major improvement in our knowledge of the average chemical and isotopic composition of the solar system. The S-U spacecraft and sample return capsule will be placed in a halo orbit around the L1 Sun-Earth libration point for two years to collect solar wind ions which implant into large passive collectors made of ultra-pure materials. Constant Spacecraft-Sun-Earth geometries enable simple spin stabilized attitude control, simple passive thermal control, and a fixed medium gain antenna. Low data requirements and the safety of a Sun-pointed spinner, result in extremely low mission operations costs.

Additional Information

© 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. Available online 18 February 1999. The material in this report is not solely the work of the authors, but instead represents a summary of the efforts of the entire Suess-Urey Phase A team from JPL, Lockheed-Martin, Caltech, Los Alamos National Laboratory and NASA-JSC. We also acknowledge consultation provided by Bob Farquar and colleagues at Applied Physics Laboratory in support of the mission design.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023