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Future Venus Missions
Phil Stooke
post Jul 1 2005, 01:30 AM
Post #1


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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.

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Guest_BruceMoomaw_*
post Nov 24 2005, 10:10 PM
Post #2





Guests






It just came through OK for me again (using the URL in my message as printed here). Must be your computer.

One can think of other ways to slim down this mission, too -- related to the decision to put the two atmospheric composition experiments on BOTH landers, although the atmosphere's composition will vary little or none from one place to another. One is a UV spectrometer -- presumably to try and identify the still-mysterious dark UV cloud absorber -- which is mounted outside the pressure hull and will burn out below 50 km; it could easily be removed from one lander.

The other is a GCMS which is mounted inside the hull and will operate down to the surface. Now, shrinking the pressure hull on one lander just to get rid of this instrument would surely cost more in design and manufacture problems than it would save -- but back in the very first round of Discovery selections, Esposito proposed a "Venus Composition Probe" in which both the UV and the mass spectrometer were mounted outside the pressure hull and only worked at high altitudes. All the composition data in Venus' lower, hotter atmosphere was obtained from a near-IR spectrometer inside the pressure hull, since it could sense all the chemically reactive trace gases we're interested in measuring at lower altitudes -- whereas the other trace gases (and especially isotopes) that we want to get better data on are pretty evenly mixed and so a mass spec can measure them in the upper air. The same could apply to the SAGE mission (which includes a near-IR spec for both atmospheric and surface composition data). Or, of course, we could put the atmospheric experiments on a separate, Discovery-class probe.

Do that, and replace the XRS/XRD with a LIBS/Raman setup, and you could get rid of ALL this probe's necessary openings to the outside hot air in its pressure hull -- all you'd need would be sealed electrical cables and fiber-optic lines. You could also greatly cut the time that it must survive on the surface, and analyze far more than one surface sample in that short time. (A motorized arm with a sensor head on its end, hooked up to fiber-optic lines leading to the various surface instruments -- including the onboard microsope, which in the current design can only look at one spot of ground -- could pat the surface at a whole range of points to analyze them in just a few minutes each; and the LIBS and near-IR spec -- and maybe the Raman -- could also operate through the same periscopic mirror as the panoramic camera to observe different, more distant spots on the surface.) I don't know how much worse a Raman is than an XRD in analyzing mineralogy -- I gather it isn't good at measuring the oxidation state of iron minerals (although the near-IR spectrometer might get good enough data on that), and I've found a fuzzy reference suggesting that Raman is worse than XRD in measuring the precise quantities of various minerals, as opposed to just confirming their presence or absence. But it's a possibility.
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Guest_vjkane2000_*
post Nov 26 2005, 06:31 AM
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Guests






QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 24 2005, 03:10 PM)
One can think of other ways to slim down this mission, too -- related to the decision to put the two atmospheric composition experiments on BOTH landers, although the atmosphere's composition will vary little or none from one place to another.  One is a UV spectrometer -- presumably to try and identify the still-mysterious dark UV cloud absorber -- which is mounted outside the pressure hull and will burn out below 50 km; it could easily be removed from one lander. ..
*


If you take Bruce's ideas on slimming down the mission to their logical conclusion, you could have a probe with just a descent imager and Raman spectrometers/LDS on one or more arms. (And probably an imager to see what the arms touch down on.) Such a probe could be very slimmed down -- perhaps enough that you could drop 4-8 on a single mission. Don't know whether this is better than the original mission idea. Have to think that the scientists/engineers would have thought of this one, too. Getting the sample inside to cooled instruments must be pretty valuable.
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Posts in this topic
- Phil Stooke   Future Venus Missions   Jul 1 2005, 01:30 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   Well, to repeat a point I've suggested (somewh...   Jul 1 2005, 09:23 AM
|- - JRehling   Phil is, of course, completely right about the lis...   Jul 1 2005, 04:28 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (JRehling @ Jul 1 2005, 08:28 AM)A poss...   Dec 15 2005, 01:34 PM
|- - Jeff7   QUOTE (JRehling @ Dec 15 2005, 08:34 AM)A bit...   Dec 15 2005, 06:33 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (Jeff7 @ Dec 15 2005, 10:33 AM)I suppos...   Dec 15 2005, 09:21 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   A simple explanation for at least part of the stor...   Dec 15 2005, 11:38 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Dec 15 2005, 03:38 PM)A sim...   Dec 16 2005, 02:17 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   I see I forgot to provide the URL for the LPSC abs...   Jul 1 2005, 09:27 AM
|- - Myran   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw wrote.)....and without any need...   Jul 1 2005, 04:31 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The main justification for simplifying a Venus lan...   Jul 1 2005, 11:28 PM
|- - AndyG   Given that the surface is so hot and so highly pre...   Jul 7 2005, 02:39 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   As there are some fairly well-described outline de...   Jul 7 2005, 02:54 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jul 7 2005, 07:54 AM)As the...   Jul 7 2005, 08:18 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Actually, this type of mission -- a balloon using...   Jul 8 2005, 01:58 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   Bruce: Very interesting - you are a fount of know...   Jul 8 2005, 02:47 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   Among the interesting points in the .PDFs to which...   Jul 8 2005, 03:03 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   A conceptual small Venus atmosphere probe picture ...   Jul 20 2005, 01:45 PM
|- - gndonald   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ Jul 8 2005, 10:47 PM) S...   Feb 20 2006, 04:34 PM
- - remcook   ESA is looking at a mission that is using a balloo...   Jul 20 2005, 01:53 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   NASA's Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG...   Nov 6 2005, 02:15 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 5 2005, 07:15 PM)the...   Nov 6 2005, 06:29 AM
- - remcook   a good update from emily on oncoming missions (VEX...   Nov 9 2005, 10:01 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   To my delight, last night I stumbled by chance acr...   Nov 24 2005, 03:23 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 24 2005, 07:23 AM)On...   Nov 25 2005, 05:22 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   One other thing which I just now noticed on the la...   Nov 24 2005, 03:26 PM
- - Phil Stooke   I just tried to access the Venus lander PDS file B...   Nov 24 2005, 04:10 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   It just came through OK for me again (using the UR...   Nov 24 2005, 10:10 PM
|- - vjkane2000   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 24 2005, 03:10 PM)On...   Nov 26 2005, 06:31 AM
- - Phil Stooke   You're right, Bruce... tried a different machi...   Nov 25 2005, 02:22 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Remember Magellan, which completed 1.5 orbits arou...   Nov 26 2005, 02:27 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   This wouldn't make the SAGE landers that much ...   Nov 26 2005, 08:24 AM
|- - vjkane2000   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 26 2005, 01:24 AM)Th...   Nov 27 2005, 06:08 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Nov 26 2005, 12:24 AM)Th...   Nov 27 2005, 07:13 AM
- - edstrick   I'd be really interested in knowing the calcul...   Nov 27 2005, 09:51 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   First: it's not the WEIGHT of imaging cameras ...   Nov 27 2005, 09:55 AM
- - Phil Stooke   Bruce said: "One possibility that comes to m...   Nov 27 2005, 09:32 PM
|- - tedstryk   Another possibility is, if the probe transmits at ...   Nov 28 2005, 03:01 AM
|- - vjkane2000   QUOTE (tedstryk @ Nov 27 2005, 08:01 PM)Anoth...   Nov 28 2005, 03:34 AM
- - BruceMoomaw   But, once again, a high-resolution radar orbiter -...   Nov 28 2005, 02:09 AM
- - Phil Stooke   Bruce, yes, lots of tesserae have small ponds of l...   Nov 28 2005, 03:34 AM
- - edstrick   The frustration of understanding anything about th...   Nov 28 2005, 06:16 AM
- - RNeuhaus   Why does not do design a good space architecture a...   Nov 28 2005, 03:20 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (RNeuhaus @ Nov 28 2005, 07:20 AM)Why d...   Nov 28 2005, 04:51 PM
|- - RNeuhaus   QUOTE (JRehling @ Nov 28 2005, 11:51 AM)An or...   Nov 28 2005, 08:42 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   I take for granted that the first three or four ge...   Nov 29 2005, 01:16 AM
- - djellison   Ahh - Nico and I saw a presentation about that at ...   Dec 15 2005, 01:38 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Yep. One would think that -- if the Ashen Light a...   Dec 16 2005, 03:17 AM
|- - David   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 16 2005, 03:17 AM)Ye...   Dec 16 2005, 01:48 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Well, it's a fact that E.E. Barnard -- one of ...   Dec 16 2005, 11:27 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   There's an empirical test (for once), and that...   Dec 17 2005, 12:22 AM
|- - David   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 16 2005, 11:27 PM)We...   Dec 17 2005, 12:47 AM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 16 2005, 03:27 PM)We...   Dec 17 2005, 06:28 AM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ Dec 16 2005, 06:27 P...   Feb 21 2006, 10:20 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Feb 21 2006, 10:20 P...   Feb 21 2006, 10:54 PM
||- - DonPMitchell   Bob, what in particular did you want to know about...   May 4 2006, 08:33 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 4 2006, 09:33 P...   May 7 2006, 03:51 PM
||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 7 2006, 08:51 AM) D...   May 7 2006, 05:37 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   Don: Thanks! I hadn't previously realise...   May 7 2006, 06:02 PM
||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 7 2006, 11:02 AM) D...   May 7 2006, 06:10 PM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (DonPMitchell @ May 7 2006, 07:10 P...   May 7 2006, 06:14 PM
||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 7 2006, 11:14 AM) C...   May 7 2006, 07:13 PM
||- - mchan   Over mine, too. IJFGI. Learn something new every...   May 8 2006, 12:52 AM
||- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (mchan @ May 8 2006, 01:52 AM) Over...   May 8 2006, 09:07 PM
|- - JRehling   QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Feb 21 2006, 02:20 P...   Feb 21 2006, 11:56 PM
- - dvandorn   One reason Martian craters are hard to see from Ea...   Dec 17 2005, 01:39 AM
- - Phil Stooke   I think the whole issue of earth-based identificat...   Dec 17 2005, 05:21 AM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (Phil Stooke @ Dec 17 2005, 05:21 A...   Feb 20 2006, 10:11 PM
- - edstrick   There was a full set of preliminary science papers...   Feb 22 2006, 08:37 AM
- - Phil Stooke   Replying to Bob about seeing Aristarchus with his ...   Feb 22 2006, 01:34 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   The presentations from the second VEXAG meeting ha...   May 3 2006, 02:51 PM
|- - nprev   Mr. Esposito's presentation was indeed informa...   May 5 2006, 12:40 AM
|- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (nprev @ May 4 2006, 05:40 PM) Mr. ...   May 5 2006, 01:53 AM
|- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (nprev @ May 5 2006, 12:40 AM) Mr. ...   May 6 2006, 09:22 AM
|- - PhilHorzempa   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 6 2006, 05:22 AM...   May 7 2006, 04:39 AM
||- - DonPMitchell   QUOTE (PhilHorzempa @ May 6 2006, 09:39 P...   May 8 2006, 09:08 AM
|- - tty   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 6 2006, 11:22 AM...   May 7 2006, 06:00 PM
|- - BruceMoomaw   QUOTE (tty @ May 7 2006, 06:00 PM) Plate ...   May 8 2006, 01:39 AM
- - RNeuhaus   I feel that the last proposal from VEXAG is more s...   May 3 2006, 04:01 PM
- - Phil Stooke   Hi Don! That was quick! Phil   May 4 2006, 09:00 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   Aha! I always wondered why Madame de Pompadou...   May 8 2006, 10:09 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (BruceMoomaw @ May 8 2006, 11:09 PM...   May 8 2006, 10:40 PM
|- - Chmee   QUOTE (Bob Shaw @ May 8 2006, 06:40 PM) B...   May 9 2006, 04:28 PM
|- - ljk4-1   QUOTE (Chmee @ May 9 2006, 12:28 PM) So w...   May 9 2006, 05:56 PM
|- - Bob Shaw   QUOTE (Chmee @ May 9 2006, 05:28 PM) So w...   May 9 2006, 05:56 PM
- - BruceMoomaw   After clawing my way through my CD-ROM library of ...   May 12 2006, 08:08 AM
- - vjkane   Presentations from the last VEXAG meeting are now ...   Jul 23 2008, 03:48 PM
- - Vultur   I think Venus rovers and balloons, someday, might ...   Nov 15 2008, 07:49 PM
- - Enceladus75   Whilst it would be brilliant to have rovers on Ven...   Nov 19 2008, 07:58 PM
- - PhilCo126   Venus resembles a depiction of "Hell" so...   Nov 20 2008, 07:04 PM
- - Juramike   The Venera landers did manage last about an hour o...   Nov 20 2008, 08:35 PM
|- - vjkane   QUOTE (Juramike @ Nov 20 2008, 08:35 PM) ...   Nov 21 2008, 05:31 PM
|- - huygens_stowaway   QUOTE (vjkane @ Nov 21 2008, 05:31 PM) Th...   Dec 4 2008, 09:37 PM
|- - centsworth_II   QUOTE (huygens_stowaway @ Dec 4 2008, 04...   Dec 4 2008, 10:02 PM
- - Paolo   An interesting Venus Flagship Mission Study   Jul 12 2009, 03:01 PM
- - qraal   Hi Guys Geoff Landis discusses aerobots and surfa...   Jul 16 2009, 09:34 AM
|- - MahFL   The Landis paper is really interesting, I did not ...   Jul 16 2009, 12:35 PM
|- - stevesliva   QUOTE (MahFL @ Jul 16 2009, 08:35 AM) The...   Jul 16 2009, 03:52 PM
- - tasp   And recall, even with an electronic device operati...   Jul 16 2009, 11:25 PM
- - stevesliva   Yeah. One of the reports mentioned that resistors...   Jul 16 2009, 11:39 PM
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