Planetary Solar Surrounder Relays

I had previously stated the need for a Solar Surrounder Satellite Network. This network allows yearlong communication with space probes exploring the planets and their moons which have different solar orbital period than the Earth. Space exploration is expensive and sending satellites to distant locations take time. Therefore, multi purposing is valuable. I propose the Solar Surrounder Satellite Network to be composed of satellites orbiting the key planets (Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). As a result, these relay satellites can be used to relay signals from another relay to the Earth as well as detect and relay weak probe signals deployed on the specific planet and its moons. In order to communicate effectively with all the moons of a planet the relays should be orbiting the planet closer than its closest moon. This would result in a more frequent communication window. The communication provided with these relays will not be continuous but in windowed time frames. Which is much better than receiving nothing for months.

These relays can be deployed to far away planets using the rocket I proposed in “Direct Trajectory To The Moon”. This design allows larger payload rockets to be developed with less complexity. The first stage is a heavy payload rocket that lifts the upper stages beyond the earth’s atmosphere and returns back to the launch site. Vertical only displacement and not encountering very high speeds during the travel, reduces the cost and design complexity. The upper stages will only operate in vacuum. Therefore, they don’t require a shell to protect them from the atmosphere. The stages will be composed of an engine and cascaded spherical tanks carrying RP1 and liquid oxygen. With this design, the second stage’s engine can also be recovered on earth close to the launch site.

Planetary missions require large payload rockets. Scaling up the existing designs would be complex and may have reliability problems. We need to come up with new and simpler designs that can be scaled easily.