Tiger's Ebb
OUR MISSION
Space is incomprehensibly vast, with countless celestial bodies and innumerable mysteries to be solved. Our small team of prospective engineers was tasked with the creation of a hypothetical mission that would tackle one of these abounding mysteries.
Enceladus
Enceladus is the 6th largest of Saturn's 82 moons. It has been a focal point of scientific analysis on the basis of possible extraterrestrial life and anomalous heat coming from the south pole of the moon. Enceladus itself is mostly composed of pure water ice, with an under-crust ocean, except, near the south pole the ice crust contains light organics such as CO2. The moon's average temperature is 330 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, however the south pole is abnormally warmer by over 100 degrees. A peculiar feature of the south pole of Enceladus is its distinguishable tiger stripes, likely caused by the abnormal heating of that area.
What We're Doing
Our team, dubbed "Tigers Ebb," is proposing an extraplanetary mission of the same name. Tiger's Ebb main goal is to reach Enceladus and perform a wide range of scientific analysis on the moon as a whole, with a much greater focus on the southern hemisphere.
Our mission consists of two separate, autonomous vehicles; An orbital satellite, and a terrestrial rover. The satellites goal is to collect topographical information of Enceladus' surface through the use of infrared and sonar sensors. It will also perform extensive imagining of the moons surface, and monitor temperature throughout the extent of the mission. The lander will collect samples of water-ice from the south pole of Enceladus and analyze the chemical composition of those samples while deployed; It will then relay that information to the satellite which will send that data back to earth.
OUR GOAL
What we hope to achieve is the in depth understanding of Enceladus as a whole. The moon is shrouded in many mysteries and we hope to unravel some of those. Specifically we want to determine whether or not there is life within the moons water-ice, we want to identify the source of the anomalous heating near the south pole, and we want to search for any more atypical characteristics that may exist on the moons surface.
LOCKHEED MARTIN INTERNSHIP
This project is the product of a self-guided internship through the aerospace company Lockheed Martin. Students from various Colorado high schools were placed in groups and asked to create a hypothetical mission that relates to the aerospace industry. Our group, Tigers Ebb, has come together to conduct research and present it here with the help of the Lockheed Martin Executive Internship Program, and the Lockheed Martin Mentors.