Future Venus Missions Options

[Phil Stooke]

Oh well, might as well start that new topic since it's already well advanced in the Juno area...

My perspective on landers is as follows. All the landers we've had so far were dropped blind onto an essentially unknown surface. Any future landers can be targeted for specific terrains. It really is not true that we have had representative landings. Even a descent image or two, a panoramic photo plus a bit of surface composition, from a simple Venera-class lander just updated a bit, would be useful if we could put several down at well chosen targets. My choices would be:

Examples of the main plains units (smooth, fractured, ridged)

tesserae

high elevation radar-bright tesserae

large fresh lava flow unit ('fluctus')

crater dark parabola

crater ejecta outflow unit

dunes area.

And I have always assumed, rightly or wrongly, that it would be relatively easy to put these down, so they ought to be fairly inexpensive as planetary landers go.

Phil

[vjkane]

Venus Landed Platform Working Group

NASA has convened a Venus Landed Platform Working Group to assess high priority science investigations that are needed on the surface of Venus. Topic areas include Venus surface geology and geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, interior processes, and surface-atmosphere interactions. This includes investigations that may be enabled by new technology approaches, such as extended duration landers via active cooling or high temperature electronics, or using surface mobility. Individuals who would like to suggest important science investigations should please send a short description of the science question being addressed, the measurements required to answer the science question, and key technical requirements such as measurement duration or mobility requirements. Please send this input to the following individuals:

Martha Gilmore, mgilmore@wesleyan.edu
Natasha Johnson, natasha.m. johnson@nasa.gov
Walter Kiefer, kiefer@lpi.usra.edu
Jonathan Sauder, jonathan.sauder@jpl.nasa.gov

The Working Group’s first meeting begins on June 19.

[JRehling]

This has been online for months now, and I'm just taking a look.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-018-0528-z

Very exciting plans… but of all the proposed missions and architectures, not many are on a solid path towards implementation. The Indian orbiter seems likely. Otherwise, we have Venus as being no better than second in line for a New Frontiers mission and the Envision orbiter (which would be a grand all-purposes Venus orbiter) one of three candidates for a future ESA mission.

[vjkane]

This has been online for months now, and I'm just taking a look.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11214-018-0528-z

Very exciting plans… but of all the proposed missions and architectures, not many are on a solid path towards implementation. The Indian orbiter seems likely. Otherwise, we have Venus as being no better than second in line for a New Frontiers mission and the Envision orbiter (which would be a grand all-purposes Venus orbiter) one of three candidates for a future ESA mission.

The Indian orbiter will carry a number of instruments, but it appears to have some severe limitations on payload mass and data rates.

The proposed ESA EnVision radar and infrared mapping mission wouldn't launch until the early 2030s if selected. It is facing severe cost and mass limitations. NASA is investigating whether it could provide the major radar mapping instrument.

The Venera-D joint Russian (lead) & US lander and orbiter could fly in the mid-2020s, but Russia is strapped for cash.

That leaves the two Discovery missions to be selected (as I remember) in 2021 for flight in the mid and late 2020s as the only other opportunity.

[JRehling]

It's interesting to me that EnVision and VOX both propose the same instrument to probe emissivity in the IR, as does the Discovery proposal VERITAS. I think that Venus Express' PFS instrument would have returned some of the same value, except that it failed and returned no data at all (the Wikipedia page erroneously reports that it did, probably a hasty editor converting original plans into the past tense after the mission ended). In a nutshell, this is similar, for Venus, to what VIMS on Cassini accomplished at Titan, making use of haze-penetrating bands to observe the surface. It would be great to have an orbiter in a low circular orbit provide this or a resolution of radar superior to that of Magellan or, as both EnVision and VOX propose, both.

It seems not impossible that VOX or another Venus mission could be the second or third next New Frontiers mission, which looks like the 2030s, as would be EnVision.

The Discovery missions have seemingly chosen every conceivable non-Venus mission that anyone can propose with Venus almost inevitably getting to the front of the queue eventually. Proposals for the next Discovery missions are due at the end of this month. If VERITAS were chosen, that could likely knock EnVision and VOX down in value, and make VICI a candidate for a future New Frontiers mission in the 2030s.

[vjkane]

It's interesting to me that EnVision and VOX both propose the same instrument to probe emissivity in the IR, as does the Discovery proposal VERITAS. I think that Venus Express' PFS instrument would have returned some of the same value, except that it failed and returned no data at all (the Wikipedia page erroneously reports that it did, probably a hasty editor converting original plans into the past tense after the mission ended). In a nutshell, this is similar, for Venus, to what VIMS on Cassini accomplished at Titan, making use of haze-penetrating bands to observe the surface. It would be great to have an orbiter in a low circular orbit provide this or a resolution of radar superior to that of Magellan or, as both EnVision and VOX propose, both.

It seems not impossible that VOX or another Venus mission could be the second or third next New Frontiers mission, which looks like the 2030s, as would be EnVision.

The Discovery missions have seemingly chosen every conceivable non-Venus mission that anyone can propose with Venus almost inevitably getting to the front of the queue eventually. Proposals for the next Discovery missions are due at the end of this month. If VERITAS were chosen, that could likely knock EnVision and VOX down in value, and make VICI a candidate for a future New Frontiers mission in the 2030s.

A German lab has been developing an IR emissivity instrument for over a decade or so. They have done extensive work on the instrument development and on interpreting the multispectral results in terms of composition. This instrument has been included on every post-Venus Express mission that I know of except possible the planned Indian mission.

[vjkane]

A German lab has been developing an IR emissivity instrument for over a decade or so. They have done extensive work on the instrument development and on interpreting the multispectral results in terms of composition. This instrument has been included on every post-Venus Express mission that I know of except possible the planned Indian mission.

Here's a link to an LPSC 2019 abstract:

VEM