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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Mar 21 2023, 12:54 PM
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#302
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Member Group: Members Posts: 127 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 291 |
More bad news for VERITAS - their funding was virtually zero'ed out this year as well. Flight delays I've seen before - but slashing the funding and stopping development is something I can't recall seeing previously...
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Mar 24 2023, 12:09 PM
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#303
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Member Group: Members Posts: 251 Joined: 14-January 22 Member No.: 9140 |
That's worrisome about VERITAS.
The notional timelines for the other missions are for a 2031 landing for the DAVINCI probe; some flyby science will precede that around January 2030. EnVision will launch in 2031 or later, and would complete its first venusian day of science about three years later, after cruise and aerobraking. The original VERITAS timeline would have had it returning results before any of that, but now it seems like it might be operating more or less simultaneously with EnVision. While any delay is disappointing, I'm not sure that I sense the specific problem that the article implies when it says that VERITAS data would have been used to "calibrate" EnVision results. I suppose that VERITAS data could have been used to determine targets for EnVision high-resolution radar mapping, but EnVision will also be able to perform that role for itself, and Magellan data already exists, so it appears that the real misfortune here is in delaying science rather than losing any. Maybe from the standpoint of real-time observable surface change it would be nice to see a snapshot of Venus from a few years before EnVision arrives, but if there's real-time change on that timeline, then there'll almost certainly be plenty of change to notice anyway, given the decades since Magellan. With seven more years before DAVINCI first approaches Venus, the long wait for NASA's return to the planet continues. |
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