Future Venus Missions |
Future Venus Missions |
Jul 1 2005, 01:30 AM
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#301
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10226 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
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 -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PDF: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Jun 12 2021, 01:40 PM
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#302
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2106 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
No, it's still happening. Not a paper (since it's a private mission), but there is a recent interview with Peter Beck here with a few more details (at 5:20 he mentions ~200 seconds in the atmosphere with a tunable laser spectrometer).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iVs0Cq84M |
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Jun 15 2021, 02:49 AM
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#303
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Member Group: Members Posts: 613 Joined: 23-February 07 From: Occasionally in Columbia, MD Member No.: 1764 |
No, it's still happening. Not a paper (since it's a private mission), but there is a recent interview with Peter Beck here with a few more details (at 5:20 he mentions ~200 seconds in the atmosphere with a tunable laser spectrometer). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7iVs0Cq84M Hmm - what he says is "laser tuned mass spectrometer" which has me a little confused. DAVINCI has a tunable diode laser spectrometer, and a mass spectrometer. But these are quite different. So what is the 'one instrument' that Beck is proposing ? (There are laser desorption mass spectrometers, but that's different, that's a technique for getting solid material to volatilize to get it into the mass analyzer) His reference to 200s in the atmosphere makes it sound like a 'Cupid's arrow' flythrough probe (that had been proposed in a previous VERITAS iteration https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2018/pdf/1763.pdf https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2....pdf?sequence=1 (that proposal used a quadrupole ion trap mass spectrometer) There were concerns at the time that the high altitudes probed (to avoid excessive aerodynamic and aerothermal loads) might not be representative of the bulk atmosphere. There is also the issue, when organics are discussed, that the high relative velocities may break up large molecules, or that ablation products from any thermal protection cause a large contamination signal. Anyway, it's exciting that a private mission is being contemplated. But the robustness of any scientific conclusions may depend on the specifics of the instrumentation and flight profile, and those details are not yet forthcoming. We'll see... |
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