Call for Papers

The 6^th International Planetary Probe Workshop (IPPW) is soliciting Papers and Posters on topics related to the science, technology, and design of planetary missions involving atmospheric entry. Topics to be addressed include: 

• Mission concept studies and science goals/requirements/drivers for all sizes of atmospheric entry missions to Venus, Titan, or the Gas Giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). Includes overviews of high priority missions as identified by the NASA decadal survey and the ESA Cosmic Visions proposal.
• Historical perspectives on the science objectives and engineering design of prior planetary probe missions, including Galileo, Pioneer Venus, Beagle, and Venera. Areas of interest include mission design and objectives, engineering challenges, success stories and lessons learned.
• Ongoing and proposed Entry, Descent, and Landing technology development activities, including but not limited to radical entry architectures, trade studies, ground-based testing, and flight experiments. Of particular interest are papers on architectures or subsystem trades to enable high mass Mars entry missions.
• Entry Descent and Landing system challenges and innovative ideas for EDL subsystems for extreme environments, including electronics, pressure vessels, instruments and sensors, communications, thermal protection systems, parachutes and other aerodynamic decelerators, command and data handling, and power systems/generation.
• Micro-probes and Mini-probes: the design and potential applications of small scale entry systems for planetary science. What are the science pulls and technology drivers?
• Entry challenges and enabling technologies for sample return missions from comets, asteroids, the moon and Mars, including planetary protection requirements for Earth return reliability and knowledge gained from the CEV/Orion  and LE-X entry system design.
• Planetary entry science payloads, including new and demanding concepts, their science output, and their technological requirements when used on entry probes. In particular radars (SAR), spectrometers, lidars, cameras etc., with heavy on-board data processing and -reduction / power / other requirements should be looked at in addition to the more traditional payloads we have already flown. Emphasis on alternate or concept enabling architectures, including balloons, gliders, and other aerial platforms.
• The engineering and science of current planetary entry missions. Note that combined or science-emphasis papers are encouraged in this topic area due to the focus placed on the engineering of missions such as MSL, Phoenix, and ExoMars at previous workshops.

Be a part of the action!  
Add to the discussions in Atlanta. Submit an abstract.

Note: Abstract Deadline is Friday, March 14, 2008.

Authors are responsible for obtaining any organizational clearance needed. Abstracts, papers, and presentation material uploaded to the IPPW6 Web site will be available to conference participants.

Oral presentations are limited to 20 minutes with five minutes for questions and answers. The preferred format for submission of abstracts is Microsoft Word. Because of space and time constraints, a limited number of papers can be accepted as oral presentations. All accepted presentations (oral and poster) are eligible for inclusion in the proceedings. A notice of paper acceptance will be sent to selected authors by Friday, April 18, 2008.