Craig Fink wrote:
Alain Fournier wrote:

Aerobraking at Saturn is a challenge. We are talking speeds greater than
35 km/s here. If you want to complicate this with a plane change using
aerodynamic lift then I think your heat shield is in sci-fi territory.
You might be able to do it with multiple passes where each orbital dip
in the atmosphere only takes away a little velocity and only changes the
plane a little. But that would take a lot of time (years) and would still
be technically challenging.


I agree, Multiple Passes are reasonable to reduce heat loads to within the
physical limits of the heatshield. Or, may not be required. The two largest
passes, Injection into a highly elliptical orbit around Saturn and Apogee
Reduction from the top to the bottom of the rings, are much smaller than
35km/s. The others can be of the same magnitude. A few months, really
dependant on the first aerobrake and the period of the injection orbit.

The 35 km/s I mentioned wasn't a delta-V. It is the speed of the probe
relative to Saturn's atmosphere at first encounter. Hitting an atmosphere
at 35 km/s is painful even if you just skim the atmosphere a little and
you only want to have an aero-braking delta-V of a few hundred m/s.
Even if you are hitting a very thin atmosphere, it will be heated to a
plasma, the ions hitting your heat shield at such high speeds will
damage your heat shield no matter what material you use.

I don't think it is impossible to do, but it is very challenging.


Alain Fournier