From science questions to Solar System exploration

Dehant, Véronique [UCL] Blanc, Michel Mackwell, Steve Soderlund, Krista M. Beck, Pierre Bunce, Emma Charnoz, Sébastien Foing, Bernard Filice, Valerio Fletcher, Leigh N. Forget, François Griton, Léa Hammel, Heidi Höning, Dennis Imamura, Takeshi Jackman, Caitriona Kaspi, Yohai Korablev, Oleg Leconte, Jérémy Lellouch, Emmanuel Marty, Bernard Mangold, Nicolas Michel, Patrick Morbidelli, Alessandro Mousis, Olivier Prieto-Ballesteros, Olga Spohn, Tilman Schmidt, Juergen Sterken, Veerle J. Tosi, Nicola Vandaele, Ann C. Vernazza, Pierre Vazan, Allona Westall, Frances et al.[show all]

This chapter reviews the way the six key questions about planetary systems, from their origins to the way they work and their habitability, identified in Chapter 1 (Blanc et al., 2021), can be addressed by means of solar system exploration, and how one can find partial answers to these six questions by flying to the different provinces to the solar system: terrestrial planets, giant planets, small bodies, and up to its interface with the local interstellar medium. It derives from this analysis a synthetic description of the most important space observations to be performed at the different solar system objects by future planetary exploration missions. These “observation requirements” illustrate the diversity of measurement techniques to be used as well as the diversity of destinations where these observations must be made. They constitute the base for the identification of the future planetary missions we need to fly by 2061, which are described in Chapter 4.