Full Version: Magellan Follow On
How difficult would it design a mission that could use SAR to map the whole of Venus at SRTM (or better!) resolution? Optical communication or the physical return of the spacecraft might be needed to handle the TB of data that would be collected.
QUOTE (SFJCody @ Jan 28 2006, 09:37 PM)
How difficult would it design a mission that could use SAR to map the whole of Venus at SRTM (or better!) resolution? Optical communication or the physical return of the spacecraft might be needed to handle the TB of data that would be collected.
Perhaps a solar sail could be employed to return a multi-TB datastore to Earth in a Stardust re-entry vehicle? It'd be one of those actuarial decisions, based on the cost per byte of data return - sort of like film vs digital...
Bob Shaw
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