• ice climber
• feasability study
• Enceladus
• JPL
• NIAC
• robot

The porpoise of this thesis is to expose the results of the feasibility study regarding the realisation of a vent climber for a future landing mission on Enceladus. It exposes the various condition we expect to find in the vents, and briefly expose the physical models taken in account. Then it focuses on the analysis of the possible configurations for a descending module, the comparisons of those and the definition of a realistic descending module obtained through a top to bottom approach. The thesis shows the various system and architectures that we analysed and the pros and cons we have identified. Finally, it shows our “first iteration design”, the verification, analysis, limits and the potentiality of such architecture. The whole work is supposed to become a starting point and reference for future development in the topic.