Mission concept for a nuclear reactor-powered Mars cryobot lander

Recently, a team from JPL and the DOE carried out a study to investigate the utility of a 3 kWe surface fission power system for Mars landed missions. In the course of the study it became clear that the application of such a power system was enabling to a wide variety of potential missions. Of these, two concepts were developed, one for a stationary lander and one for a reactor-powered rover. This paper discusses the design of the lander mission, which was developed around the concept of landing a cryobot on the Mars north polar ice cap. The cryobot is designed to bore through the entire 2-3 km thickness of the ice cap, providing a picture of the Martian climate spanning more than a million years of Martian history. The high sustained power available from the reactor system proves to be an ideal match for this mission design, enabling a level of science return unavailable from any alternative power sources. The lander design is based on a minimum extrapolation of technology, drawing heavily on the existing concepts in development at JPL for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) lander and EDL systems. This paper describes the unique design challenges encountered in the development of this mission architecture and incorporation of the fission power system in the lander, and presents a detailed description of the final design of this trailblazing science mission.