Craig Fink wrote:
A planetary probe should be able to fly in and sample Saturn's ring material
and analysis it and/or return a sample to Earth. The relative velocity
between the probe and ring material would be almost zero if the probe is
in-plane near circular.

Has anyone proposed or is working on a Saturn Ring Sample mission?

If the probe is in-plane near circular at 180 Mm from Saturn centre
(the top of Saturn rings) it needs a delta v of about 6 km/s to get
out of the Saturn system. That is a rather large delta v. And then
you knead some more delta v to get to Earth.

You can get some help by using gravity assists from Saturnian moons and
you can use some fancy high ISP propulsion (ion drives or what not). But
still we aren't talking about an easy mission here.


Alain Fournier