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Operations, cost, collaboration:
This mission is proposed, and is ideally suited as, an international collaboration. ESA and its partners (essentially NASA at this stage, but note also that the Canadian investigators have proposed contributions to the payload) will share the mission operations according to a scheme to be defined during the study phases. TANDEM will require new technologies and capabilities so that the science goals can be achieved within a cost cap defined at a level of 2.5 Billion Euros (and in any case not exceeding the Cassini-Huygens budget, a detailed cost analysis is given in the proposal). International participation among ESA, NASA, and other potential partners will play a key role in achieving all the science goals of this mission and in sharing the costs. Although cost sharing will be established in later phases, we can suggest that a possible ESA contribution to this proposal could be the in situ exploration of Titan and Enceladus through the Titan probes, the balloon and the Enceladus package. In addition, an Ariane launch could be considered, the other partners providing the orbiter. Other combinations are possible and will be considered as the TANDEM study moves forward.
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