SPRITE (spacecraft)

Many fundamental questions about Saturn have not have been fully investigated at the end of the Cassini mission in September 2017, because of limitations in its implementation and science instrumentation.

[2] SPRITE was proposed by Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory with as principal investigator Amy Simon at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

[5] The SPRITE team explains that "to develop an improved understanding of the formation, evolution, and structure of the Solar System, it is essential that the role played by the giant planets be well understood, and this cannot be accomplished without in situ measurements of the composition, structure, dynamics, and processes of Saturn's atmosphere".

[8] The descent strategy calls for using a heat shield followed by a parachute that would permit up to two hours for the probe to collect data.

[7] The Atmospheric Structure Instrument (ASI) would provide the pressure and temperature profile of Saturn's atmosphere to determine the altitude profile of static stability, and when combined with cloud measurements from the nephelometer, it would elucidate processes that determine the location and structure of Saturn's multiple cloud layers.