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We discuss the in-flight autonomous assembly as the means to build advanced planetary science payloads to explore the outer regions of the solar system. These payloads are robotically constructed from modular parts delivered by a group of smallsats (< 20 kg) which are placed on fast solar system transfer trajectories while being accelerated by solar sail propulsion to velocities of ~10 AU/yr. This concept provides the planetary science community with inexpensive, frequent access to distant regions of the solar system with flexible, reconfigurable instruments and systems that are assembled in flight. It permits faster revisit times, rapid replenishment and technology insertions, longer mission capability with lower costs. It also increases the science capabilities of smallsats via the use of modular, redundant architectures and allows for proliferation of sensing instrumentation throughout the solar system.
Two new interplanetary technologies have advanced in the past decade to the point where they may enable exciting, affordable missions that reach further and faster deep into the outer regions of our solar system: (i) small and capable interplanetary
Astrophysical measurements away from the 1 AU orbit of Earth can enable several astrophysical science cases that are challenging or impossible to perform from Earthbound platforms, including: building a detailed understanding of the extragalactic bac
Understanding the origin and evolution of the lunar volatile system is not only compelling lunar science, but also fundamental Solar System science. This white paper (submitted to the US National Academies Decadal Survey in Planetary Science and Astr
We review the importance of recent UV observations of solar system targets and discuss the need for further measurements, instrumentation and laboratory work in the coming decade. In the past decade, numerous important advances have been made in so
Despite extensive searches and the relative proximity of solar system objects (SSOS) to Earth, many remain undiscovered and there is still much to learn about their properties and interactions. This work is the first in a series dedicated to detectin