Future Venus Missions Options

[Ulysses]

Some news from the BBC:

Densely clouded in acid-laden mist, Venus used to be the Soviet Union's favourite target for planetary exploration.

Now, after a lull of almost three decades, Russia is making plans for a new mission to the "morning star" and has invited Western scientists to participate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8294925.stm

[peter59]

Venus Climate Orbiter "PLANET-C" has new name AKATSUKI.
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2009/10/20091023_akatsuki_e.html

You can send messages that will be printed in fine letters on an aluminum plate and placed aboard "AKATSUKI".
http://www.jaxa.jp/event/akatsuki/index_e.html

[Hungry4info]

I thought they renamed their spacecraft after launch =o.

[centsworth_II]

I thought they renamed their spacecraft after launch =o.

I guess that's when they will remove the quotation marks from "AKATSUKI".

[Paolo]

Thanks to the "exuberant" performance of the H-IIA launcher, preferred over the original M-V, Japan will launch two additional payloads in solar orbit in addition to the VCO: the Ikaros solar sail and the UNITEC-1 engineering test

[Paolo]

A few updates on Venera D from the Lavochkin site (in Russian) http://www.laspace.ru/rus/news.php#325

[punkboi]

Akatsuki (and IKAROS solar sail) launch date set:

6:44:14 a.m. on May 18 (Japan time) / 5:44:14 p.m. EDT on May 17

http://www.jaxa.jp/countdown/f17/index_e.html

[Paolo]

There is a nice article on SAGE in Air & Space http://www.airspacemag.com/space-explorati...den-Planet.html
no matter which mission is selected, the next New Frontiers selection will be an interesting one

[colin_wilson]

Updates on the Russian Venera-D mission:

There is now a webpage (in Russian) : http://www.venera-d.cosmos.ru
An English version of the website may appear soon, but in the meantime one of several internet-based translation tools can be used.
This website still shows an original mission conception, which included a lower cloud balloon as well as a second upper cloud balloon, as well as a lander and orbiter.

A more recent presentation shows that the mission architecture has been simplified, and now consists of an orbiter, a sub-satellite, and a lander but no balloons.
http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPS...PS2011-1334.pdf

[tedstryk]

I recently did a write-up on it. http://planetary.org/blog/article/00003210/

[B Bernatchez]

The article mentions that the operational life will be about 3 hours, which is the battery life. With a better power source, could this lander survive for longer? In other words, have there been sufficient advances in materials science that would allow a lander to survive, say, a week?, a month?

[vjkane]

With a better power source, could this lander survive for longer?

There have been various suggestions for a nuclear powered lander that would essentially operate an air conditioner to cool the critical electronics. Given the half life of Pu238, the life on the surface could be long. However, I don't think that the technologies are very far along in development. None of the Venus concepts studied by the Decadal Survey, for example, were long-lived landers.

[ncc1701d]

How long until the technology from TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X is used to map venus? I assume the technology would work there?
reference story blog here:
planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2011/2881.html

[machi]

Missions for high resolution (1-10 meters) radar imaging of the Venusian surface were proposed by multiple teams. Most active today are teams from Israel (MuSAR mission with possible NASA cooperation) and India.

[JRehling]

To reply to the lander posts from December, I'm linking to this thread from even further back:

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...d&pid=98136

In a nutshell, the problem for Venus landers is that innovative approaches to the heat require technological advances, which add to the mission cost and in a competitive environment, put any Venus surface selection at a disadvantage relative to the competitors. If the technology development were distributed over multiple missions that could make use of high-temperature endurance, that would be more favorable. We could have a dynamic where Venus surface missions keep losing Discovery / New Frontiers competitions ad nauseam, lacking the added support of technology for a superior science return. Note that the United States still has never launched a mission to Venus's surface (the one Pioneer probe which survived a short time withstanding).

In contrast, Venus holds advantages over most other destinations for orbital missions.