Russia Plans "long-lived" Venus Probe Options

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Russia Plans "Long-Lived" Venus Probe

The press secretary of the Russian Federal Space Agency, Vyacheslav Davidenko, has said that Russia will design and launch a long-living probe to Venus by 2015. The probe is known as Venera-D.

Davidenko told a news briefing that within the federal Space budget for 2006-2015 was envisaged, “work to develop a principally new spacecraft, Venera D, intended for detailed studies of the atmosphere and surface of Venus”.

“It is expected that the craft with a long, more than one month period of active existence will land on the surface of the planet that is the nearest to the earth. Nobody has done such thing on Venus so far.”

Source: ITAR-TASS

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Good description of the original Russian/American "SAGE" can be obtained indirectly at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1993LPI....24.1381S .

Now for the instruments on the proposed American SAGE. As I mentioned, back yonder in 2003 I stumbled across a list of the experimenters for Larry Esposito's "SAGE" which he had inadvertenly put on the public Web where no-gooders like me could see it. After I sent him a message asking for further information, he reacted with shock and horror and hastily yanked it off the Web -- but not before I'd made a copy, heh heh. And now that JPL's public technical report on SAGE is finally available ( http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstre...4/1/03-2520.pdf ) we can match some of them up nicely.

Descent Imager and Spectral Radiometer -- Uwe Keller, Max Planck Institute (a member of the Titan DISR team)

X-Ray Fluorescence and Diffraction -- David Blake, ARC (PI for the "CheMin" instrument on MSL)

Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer -- Paul Mahaffy, GSFC (PI for the "SAM" instrument on MSL)

UV Imaging Spectrograph -- Bill McClintock, LASP (U. of Colorado)

The others are harder to match firmly. One is "Colaprete", which has to be Anthony Colaprete of ARC -- an atmospheric specialist, which seems to link him with the Atmospheric Structure Experiment. Another is "Boynton", which seems to be John Boynton of LASP -- one of the two people mentioned on the Web as associated with the Camera Hand Lens Microscope (which has already been tested). Finally, we have "Crisp", which is probably either David Crisp or Joy Crisp of JPL (married, I presume). David seems to go in more for meteorology instruments, though, while Joy seems to be a geologist, which links her closer to the PanCam.

Anyway, as I say, not a Russian in the lot, and indeed there seems to be virtually no intersection between the experimenters (and instruments) on the first SAGE and the second, all-American SAGE.

[Bob Shaw]

Bruce:

Some grabs from the .pdf you pointed us at showing the SAGE spacecraft layout - note also the substantial drill assembly.

Bob Shaw

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

It's a clever mission plan. The Venera spacecrafts were 6 tons, and required a Proton rocket to launch. This proposal is basically the Vega lander stuck on a Fregat. It can be launched by a Soyuz, and the pieces are probably all sitting in a warehouse at NPO Lavochkin.

But it's Not Invented Here. :-)

[ljk4-1]

It's a clever mission plan. The Venera spacecrafts were 6 tons, and required a Proton rocket to launch. This proposal is basically the Vega lander stuck on a Fregat. It can be launched by a Soyuz, and the pieces are probably all sitting in a warehouse at NPO Lavochkin.

But it's Not Invented Here. :-)

Those are probably the very landers mentioned in Omni magazine in 1991
that Russia tried to sell for just $2 million.