Program Options to Explore Ocean Worlds

vast oceans inside most of the large Jovian and Saturnian icy moons, and Kuiper Belt Objects like Triton, Charon,
and Pluto whose geologies are dominated by water and ammonia. Key pieces of the ocean-world science puzzle –
which when completed may reveal whether life is widespread in the cosmos, why it exists where it does, and how it
originates – are distributed among them. The eventual exploration of all these worlds will yield humanity’s total
tangible knowledge about life in the universe, essentially forever. Thus, their exploration has existential significance
for humanity’s self-regard, and indeed perhaps of our place in the natural scheme. The matter of planning how to
pursue such a difficult and unprecedented exploration opportunity is therefore historic. The technical challenges are
formidable, far harder than at Mars: missions to the Jovian and Saturnian ocean worlds are severely power-limited;
trip times can be as much as a half decade and decade, respectively. And the science targets are global-scale oceans
beneath kilometers of cryogenic ice. Reaching and exploring them would be a multi-generational undertaking, so
again it is essential to plan and prepare. Today, we lack the instrumentation, subsystems, and remote operationalintelligence
technologies needed to build and use exploration avatars as good as what we can envision needing.