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

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I take for granted that the first three or four geological Venus landers will carry cameras. The question is just how many landers will be sent to other parts of the planet afterwards, and how many of them should also carry cameras. And since Venus (let's face it) is not burningly high on America's list of space priorities, it will be a long time before this question even becomes relevant.

The near-term question that IS relevant is whether we should send off a few geological landers right now (a la SAGE), or whether we should wait until we do a little more orbital reconnaissance (with radar and/or near-IR), after Venus Express, to select good landing sites for them. I don't begin to know enough science to judge this question, but I'll be interested in hearing what the VEXAG people say shortly.