Probing the Kraken

[koshelenkovv]

(Finally, I found him!)

Here the Kraken Prober on launchpad. Looks somewhat biggish and overkill, but whatever, it will do the job.

Liftoff!

Reaching over 2000 m/s and flying up to 100 km is easy when your vehicle is small and light.

It's even easier now with thrust limiter and new engine behavior.

Squeezing last newtons of thrust

Detaching interplanetary stage and circularizing (need only 112 m/s). Lifter stage will fall on the planet creating no space debris.

In order to perform aerocapture in soupy atmosphere of Jool craft needs massive heat shield.

Such horrible contraption will make probe unreasonably heavy, which will render launch vehicle huge, expensive, and unreliable.

So I decided to do not use shield and performed pure gravity capture instead.

Laythe flyby and gravity assist

The green ball of Jool.

The rest is easy and there is no reason for sparing dV - I have a lot of it.

Thrust limiter allows to do incredibly precise burns - down to 0.03 m/s

In search of Deep Space Kraken

Here he is!

Killed orbital velocity and detached interplanetary stage. It will fall on the surface creating no space junk.

It seems like about 1200 m/s of dV in probe will remain unused.

Landing now!

Transmitting science back home.

Edited May 6, 2014 by koshelenkovv

[Scotius]

You've found big, ol' cephalopod indeed And it's a very nice, minimalistic interplanetary probe design. Wish i could build something so efficient and small at the same time LOL.