This paper presents a staged no-flyby Earth-to-Mercury mission architecture in whichpropulsion roles are separated by regime: solar sail for long-arc heliocentric shaping, electricpropulsion (EP) for capture-oriented braking and orbit matching, and a dedicated TerminalDescent Thruster (TDT) for landing. The primary contribution is explicit transfer-to-landing integration with mass-closure and uncertainty analysis in one unified architecture.Across reproducible trajectory, mass, thermal, and uncertainty analyses, results sup-port conditional transfer-layer feasibility rather than mission-qualified closure. Evidenceincludes an expanded N = 500 reduced-order Monte Carlo campaign (transfer-target suc-cess rate 0.844), a matched-baseline GMAT parity case with transfer-duration agreementat machine precision, and a CSV-mode 3D launch-window campaign with direct optimalcontrol and JPL/Horizons ephemeris inputs (13/13 windows reached target radius over0–360 day offsets; arrival-v∞ 95% CI high = 1.6466 km/s). However, the core uncertaintymodel remains planar, the 3D campaign terminates at target radius rather than capture-through-landing, and cross-tool parity for arrival state and propellant remains open. Thepaper therefore presents a reproducible pre-PDR architecture baseline and defines explicitvalidation gates required before journal-grade mission-feasibility claims.
Samuel Monteiro (Mon,) studied this question.