Future Venus Missions |
Future Venus Missions |
Jul 1 2005, 01:30 AM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10256 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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Nov 27 2005, 09:32 PM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10256 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
Bruce said:
"One possibility that comes to mind, though, is scattering a bunch of probes around on Venus that don't have imagers of any type (in addition to some that do), in order to get purely compositional data from the surface at a number of places for comparison purposes" One problem with doing this without a camera is that you may not know the local geological context of the sample you get. Many tessera areas, for instance, have small patches of basalt in low spots, and many plains areas have small cones, ridges or patches of older material protruding through the plains material. Which material are you sampling? The Venera images and compositions we have are compromised a bit in usefulness because it's not really possible to relate them to specific geological units. Bandwidth is a problem, but it's less of one now than it used to be - not long ago the idea of transmitting a heavily compressed image was anathema, but now it's done quite often. We would be better off with descent imaging, even if horribly compressed, in order to get the exact location of the landing site. And images can be compressed a lot these days. Of course I'm an image guy so I may be biased! 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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