Preliminary design of a mission to triton based on a concurrent engineering approach

The objective of this study is to investigate how a Concurrent Engineering (CE) approach can be integrated in the development of the pre-phase-A design of an interplanetary space mission and to highlight the advantages which can be obtained in terms of development resources, as time and cost. Indeed, the effectiveness of the CE approach and of its real-time interdisciplinary activities is particularly noticeable in the study of systems that exhibit a very high level of complexity, as space systems do. In this work a modern CE tool has been used to carry out a feasibility design of a space exploration probe named TRITO, TRIton Tomography Orbiter. It is conceived as a mission to investigate the Neptune system and its main moon Triton. The collaborative philosophy of CE has demonstrated to be very helpful in meeting the challenging mission requirements and the strict constraints imposed by the harsh environmental conditions encountered during the mission. A preliminary platform budgets sizing and some mission criticalities are studied.