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

[dtolman]

Good news - VERITAS is back! Funding was restored in the latest budget, and it's now on NASA's schedule with a 2031 launch date

[vjkane]

Good news - VERITAS is back! Funding was restored in the latest budget, and it's now on NASA's schedule with a 2031 launch date

There is an apparent cost: the launch of the DAVINCI mission has been delayed.

The budget request doesn't give a reason for the DAVINCI delay, but it may have been to free up a funding wedge for VERITAS.

Here is the language from the budget request:

"This budget supports the VERITAS mission to launch during an available Venus opportunity in
2031-2032. NASA reduced the future Discovery and Planetary SmallSat budgets which will delay the
release of the next Discovery and SIMPLEx AOs to no earlier than FY 2026. This budget also delays the
DAVINCI mission launch from 2029 to an available Venus opportunity in the 2031-2032 timeframe."

DAVINCI will release its probe on it's third encounter with Venus (the multiple encounters allow the probe to be targeted to the desired descent region).

I believe that VERITAS will enter orbit on its first Venus encounter, but there will be a delay to the prime mapping mission for an extended period of aerobraking. EnVision's prime mission will be delayed for the same reason.

For all three missions, it appears that their prime data collection will begin in the 2033-2035 period.

[bobik]

The budget request doesn't give a reason for the DAVINCI delay, but it may have been to free up a funding wedge for VERITAS.

At the SMD Community Budget Town Hall meeting, Lori Glaze emphasized that the delay of DAVINCI is "purely a budget-driven decision".