Indian mission to Venus, - proposed! Options

[Phil Stooke]

Interesting news item from The Asian Age:

http://www.asianage.com/india/after-mars-i...e-2-3-years-335

Quick summary - looks like it's only a feasibility study, so I don't know how far it has gone along the planning and proposal process. But the veteran French planetary balloon proponent Jacques Blamont has been working with Indians on the plans, and one or more balloons in the atmosphere are part of the mission plan.

Phil

[JTN]

Bit of buzz about this in Indian press sites recently (via spacetoday.net aggregator). E.g., indiatimes.com:

a date with Venus in 2023

"We have received great response from across the world, and more than 20 payloads planned," said Isro chairman K Sivan

[JRehling]

20 instruments would be quite a packed mission – none of Mars Observer, Voyager, and Cassini had more than 12! I'm hopeful that the Venus Emissivity Mapper is part of the set. This mission would have a highly elliptical orbit, so coverage at high resolution would be limited, but even getting this data for a stripe around Venus could be a nice addition to our understanding.