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Prospector: An heavy US multirole lunar explorer. Killed by
the manned program Apollo. (NASA image)
You can find more on Prospector in my book on
lunar exploration history.
See also the Encyclopedia Astronautica entry for Prospector. |
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Surveyor Block II. This was an heavy instrumented
version of Surveyor. Never flown.
Only two instruments, the SMSS robot arm and the alpha ray spectrometer
flown on Surveyor Block I.
(NASA image)
You can find more on Surveyor Block II in my book
on lunar exploration history.
See also the Encyclopedia Astronautica entry for Surveyor
Block II. |
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This image shows one of the losing proposals for NASA Lunar
Orbiter probe.
Being spin stabilized this is either the Hughes of TRW proposal. Can
anybody point out which of the two?
For more on Lunar Orbiter see the Destination
Moon NASA book. |
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Halley Intercept Mission. This is the solar ion
propulsion version of the US Halley Comet Probe.
However, the United States decided not to built a dedicated probe for
Halley Comet exploration.
(NASA Image) |
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Halley solar sail heliogyro, designed by JPL. The entire
vehicle was spinning to provide stability, while the blades could be
pitched to provide attitude control. (NASA/JPL/Caltech Image) |
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Mars Airplane Mission. 12 hydrazine powered airplanes to be
delivered to Mars in three batches of four by the Space Shuttle using
the Viking aeroshell. The aircraft could
deploy small seismometric stations to the ground. Proposed in 1979 but
not accepted.
The idea of a Mars Airplane is currently again considered by NASA and
by ESA, which has built a Martian autogyro prototype. (NASA Image) |
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A depiction of a US pre-Voyager Europa lander. No
firm plan for such a probe existed at the time nor exists at this time.
(NASA Image) |
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NASA's Mariner Jupiter Orbiter, also known (unofficially) as
Voyager-3, relying heavily on Voyager hardware
(note, however, the new orbit insertion nozzle). It became the Galileo Jupiter Orbiter. (NASA Image) |
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I have found this image in the Novosti booklet "L'espace
au service de la science", dating from 1987.
It seems to depict a Phobos mission using a Vega bus (note the solar
panels!).
I have no idea whether this is just an artistic license or a real
project.
I have not found any reference to such a mission elsewhere.
Ideas, anyone? (Drawing by A. Sokolov) |
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Kepler ESA Mars Orbiter. This 800 kg mass probe was proposed
for launch in 1988 on an Ariane-3. It was to study the Martian
atmosphere and magnetosphere and to study the topography using a radar
altimeter. Not approved. (ESA Drawing) |
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ISPM (International Solar Polar Mission): two
probes, one European, one American, to fly over the Sun's poles.
Scaled down to become Ulysses. (NASA image) |
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VOIR (Venus Orbiting Imaging Radar). A NASA probe. Scaled
down to becomeMagellan. (NASA image) |
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An early drawing of the CRAF (Comet Rendez-vous/Asteroid
Fly-by) US probe. In the end, this was to be
a twin probe to Cassini, but was canceled in
1992. (NASA Image) |
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CNSR (Comet Nucleus Sample Return). This was to be a
cooperation between ESA and NASA. In particular, the US were to have
provided the spacecraft bus, the same as CRAF (see above) and Cassini. Scaled down to become Rosetta, to be launched by ESA
alone in 2003. (ESA Image) |
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Two images of the proposed
Clementine-2 probe, designed to fire anti-missile impactors against
asteroids.
The original mission plan included fly-bies of asteroids 433 Eros and
4179 Toutatis (LLNL Images)
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