A Radioisotope-Heated Melt Probe for the Enceladus South Polar Ice: Decay Heat, Descent Rate and Thermal Budget

The system named in the title is developed here as a worked design, derived from the physics of its operating environment and reported throughout as SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED. The probe is a civilian science instrument built to reach the ocean of Enceladus beneath its south polar terrain and to measure temperature, salinity and chemistry there; it carries sensors and a sampler only. The deposited computation script produces every number in the paper from stated inputs; among its results are descent duration of 292.5 days, ice-ocean interface pressure of 0.62 megapascals and thermoelectric auxiliary power of 25 watts. The study assembles component budgets for mass and power, examines how the design behaves away from its design point, and closes with an explicit statement of what the sizing does not establish.