MISSION DESIGN FOR THE EXPLORATION OF ICE GIANTS, KUIPER BELT OBJECTS AND THEIR MOONS USING KILOPOWER ELECTRIC PROPULSION

The exploration of Ice Giants, Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and their moons poses unique challenges from a mission design standpoint. NASA is currently developing a scalable 1-10 kW-electric space fission reactor, known as Kilopower, that may be useful in solving these challenges. The focus of this paper is to investigate the applicability of Kilopower Electric Propulsion to orbiting missions to Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. This effort is broken into two parts for each destination. First, a broad search of interplanetary trajectories with multiple gravity assists is completed to identify a range of mission opportunities from 2025 to 2045. Second, preliminary analysis is completed to understand the accessibility of various destination orbits, including elliptical orbits around the primary body and circular orbits around the largest moons. Results suggest that orbital missions to Uranus and Neptune are feasible with reasonable time of flight on medium class launch vehicles. Further work is necessary to achieve similar success with Pluto missions, but preliminary results are promising.