中继小质量星际探测器群
Relaying Swarms of Low-Mass Interstellar Probes
摘要：
由来自地球的定向能量推动的低质量探测器是探索附近恒星系统的早期选择。这种技术的一个挑战性方面是将科学观测数据返回地球。我们比较两种配置来实现这一点。直接配置利用从探头到采用大光子收集器的地面接收器的光传输。在中继配置中，以均匀间隔隔开的探测器充当科学数据的再生中继器，这些数据最终从最近发射的探测器到达地面接收器。继电器配置的优点和缺点进行了讨论。数值比较近似相等的探头质量在两种情况下，通过使用相同的光发射功率和等效的总发射加接收孔径面积。当总下行链路数据速率相等时，中继配置受益于较小的地面接收收集器，但由于中继探测接收孔径面积的限制，也需要非常频繁的发射以实现更高的数据速率。直接配置可以通过增加地面收集器面积来实现更高的数据速率，而无需如此频繁的发射。继电器配置中的单点故障问题可以通过引入继电器旁路模式来解决，但这只能以进一步增加发射速率或减少数据量为代价，以及设计和操作复杂性的显著增加。考虑到发射和收集器面积的成本，直接配置被发现，以实现较低的整体成本的范围内的成本参数值和数据速率的一个很大的利润率。
英文摘要：
Low-mass probes propelled by directed energy from earth are an early option for exploration of nearby star systems. A challenging aspect of such technology is returning scientific observational data to earth. We compare two configurations for achieving this. A direct configuration utilizes optical transmission from the probe to a terrestrial receiver employing a large photon collector. In a relay configuration, probes spaced at uniform intervals act as regenerative repeaters for the scientific data, which eventually arrives at a terrestrial receiver from the most recently launched probe. A number of advantages and disadvantages of the relay configuration are discussed. A numerical comparison approximates equal probe mass in the two cases by using the same optical transmit power and equivalent total transmit plus receive aperture area. When the total downlink data rate is equal, the relay configuration benefits from a smaller terrestrial receive collector, but also requires very frequent launches to achieve higher data rates due to the limitations on relay probe receive aperture area. The direct configuration can achieve higher data rates without such frequent launches by increasing terrestrial collector area. A single-point failure problem in the relay configuration can be addressed by introducing relay-bypass modes, but only at the expense of further increases in launch rate or reductions in data volume, as well as a considerable increase in design and operational complexity. Taking into account launch and collector area costs, the direct configuration is found to achieve lower overall cost by a wide margin over a range of cost parameter values and data rates.
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