1,000 AU SunVoyager Spacecraft
Recently I have been looking at deep space probes driven by inertial confinement fusion propulsion. The SunVoyager is a mission concept for a 500 - 1000 AU flight carrying a 100 tons payload. In the current configuration it would complete the mission in a trip time of order 6 - 10 years travelling at speeds of 720 km/s. It would use a 5.76 milli-gram pellet filled with D3He fuel detonated at 10 Hz pulse frequency augmented with expellant propellant for enhanced mass flow rate.
The laser driver would be 43.5 MJ delivered to the target with an assumed efficiency of 24.3% which implies a wall plug equivalent energy of 179 MJ. This is using a laser with an effective intensity of 4e17 W/cm2 and 60 separate beamlines. ICF propulsion is difficult.
The spacecraft would have several missions. This includes travelling to the location of the gravitational focus point at 500 - 1000 AU where high resolution images of the nearby exoplanets can be obtained. This includes visiting an unknown dwarf planet on the way out and observations of any incoming interstellar asteroids and measurements of the solar heliosphere charged particle, dust and magnetic fields. This includes searching for emission signatures from advanced propulsion engines that may be detected from any vessels out there in deep space representing advanced extraterrestrial intelligence.
The SunVoyager was designed using a code I have been constructing in Fortran 95 called HeliosX. For information see the first concept paper published in the Journal of Spacecraft & Rockets and a follow-up paper published sometime later which contained a more refined design definition:
Development of the HeliosX Mission Analysis Code for Advanced ICF Space Propulsion, Acta Astronautica, 202, 157-173, 2023.
SunVoyager: Interstellar Precursor Probe Mission Concept Driven by Inertial Confinement Fusion Propulsion, Journal of Spacecraft & Rockets, 60(3), May-June 2023.
Development of the SunVoyager Interstellar Precursor Probe Driven by Inertial Confinement Fusion Propulsion, Journal of Spacecraft & Rockets, 28 May 2024.
The SunVoyager concepts represent my efforts to construct vehicles that cover the entire interstellar roadmap, beginning with interplanetary missions, deep space precursor missions and eventually ending with full interstellar flight. If work on the SunVoyager concepts ever continues they will need to be developed to a higher level of fidelity in terms of system definitions like mass.
