Mission type | Atmospheric Probe |
---|---|
Operator | Rocket Lab / MIT |
Website | |
Spacecraft properties | |
Bus | High Energy Photon [1] |
Manufacturer | Rocket Lab |
Dry mass | Probe:17 kg (37 lb) [2] |
Payload mass | Probe:1 kg (2.2 lb) [2] |
Start of mission | |
Launch date | 30 December 2024 (planned) [3] |
Rocket | Electron |
Launch site | Launch Complex 1, Māhia [1] |
Contractor | Rocket Lab |
Flyby of Moon | |
Closest approach | 2025 (planned) |
Venus atmospheric probe | |
Spacecraft component | Probe |
Atmospheric entry | 13 May 2025 (planned) [3] |
Transponders | |
Band | S-band [1] |
Venus Life Finder Missions [4] |
Venus Life Finder is a planned uncrewed spacecraft to Venus designed to detect signs of life in the Venusian atmosphere. [1] The first private Venus mission,the spacecraft is being developed by Rocket Lab in collaboration with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [5] The spacecraft will consist of a high energy Photon cruise stage which will send a small atmospheric probe into Venus with a single instrument,an autofluorescing nephelometer,to search for organic compounds within Venus' atmosphere. [6]
Originally planned for launch in May 2023,the probe is now planned to launch no earlier than 30 December 2024,with arrival at Venus on 13 May 2025. [3]
Research published in 2020 indicated the presence of phosphine (PH3) in Venus' atmosphere,resulting in a widespread public and academic interest in the possibility of life in the Venusian atmosphere. [7] [8] Although the probe will not directly search for phosphine,it will search for organic compounds in Venus' atmosphere,which would indicate potentially habitable conditions within Venus' cloud layer. [6] [9] Additionally,the mission will demonstrate an inexpensive,deep space mission with a small spacecraft and small launch vehicle,as well as mature the interplanetary Photon spacecraft. [1] Peter Beck,CEO of Rocket Lab commented that the Venus Life Finder represents a "real opportunity in the market for these incremental little missions in between [NASA missions]". [10]
Venus Life Finder is hoped to be the first of a series of small missions to Venus to better understand the planet. [4]
The spacecraft consists of two main components- a high energy Photon cruise stage,and a small atmospheric probe with a autofluorescing nephelometer. [2]
The high energy Photon cruise stage was first developed for NASA's CAPSTONE mission. The Photon cruise stage,which is a self-contained spacecraft with solar arrays for generating power,an altitude control system,and a HyperCurie engine for propulsion,will remain attached to the atmospheric probe until 30 minutes prior to atmospheric entry. [1] [2]
The 17 kg (37 lb) cone-shaped atmospheric probe measures just 40 cm (16 in) across,which was chosen to accommodate the electronics and the focal length of the nephelometer. [1] The probe outer mould line is a scaled-down version of the Deep Space 2 probe. Like the Deep Space 2 probe,the probe carries no parachute nor does it eject its heat shield. The nephelometer,flight computer,and radio are housed in a spherical titanium pressure vessel encased within a layer of insulation to protect the electronics and instrument from the corrosive Venusian atmosphere and maintain acceptable temperatures. [2]
The probe contains one scientific instrument:
Venus Life Finder is being developed by a team of less than thirty people,led by Sara Seager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [6] The mission cost is estimate at less than 10 million US dollars,funded by Rocket Lab,MIT and undisclosed philanthropists. Peter Beck,CEO of Rocket Lab,has said that the spacecraft is a "nights-and-weekends project,”and that it “gets pushed to the side all the time,but [they are] still working on it.” [3]
As of February 2024,Venus Life Finder is planned to launch no earlier then 30 December 2024 by an Electron launch vehicle from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand. After being delivered to low earth orbit,the Photon cruise stage will perform a series of burns culminating in a lunar gravity assist which will send the spacecraft to Venus. [3] During the 128 day interplanetary cruise,the spacecraft will make occasional mid-course corrections in preparation for arrival at Venus. [1] [2]
The probe will separate from the Photon cruise stage 30 minutes before Venus atmospheric entry on 13 May 2025. Entering on the night-side to minimize background light for the autofluorescence nephelometer instrument,the probe will experience a peak g-force of 60 Gs and will descend through the atmosphere without a parachute. [11] The probe will have just five minutes in the cloud layer,between 65 km (40 mi) to 45 km (28 mi) in altitude,to perform its measurements. [6] The probe will directly transmit its data to Earth by S-band until expected loss of signal thirty minutes after atmospheric entry,after which it will impact the Venusian surface. [1] Due to constraints on the power of the transmitter as well as limited transmission time,the data collected will be sent through a neural network to fit within the limited 125 bytes/second bandwidth allotted. [11]
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is a terrestrial planet and is the closest in mass and size to its orbital neighbour Earth. Venus is notable for having the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, composed mostly of carbon dioxide with a thick, global sulfuric acid cloud cover. At the surface it has a mean temperature of 737 K and a pressure of 92 times that of Earth's at sea level. These conditions are extreme enough to compress carbon dioxide into a supercritical state close to Venus's surface.
Mariner 1, built to conduct the first American planetary flyby of Venus, was the first spacecraft of NASA's interplanetary Mariner program. Developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and originally planned to be a purpose-built probe launched summer 1962, Mariner 1's design was changed when the Centaur proved unavailable at that early date. Mariner 1, were then adapted from the lighter Ranger lunar spacecraft. Mariner 1 carried a suite of experiments to determine the temperature of Venus as well to measure magnetic fields and charged particles near the planet and in interplanetary space.
The Venera program was the name given to a series of space probes developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather information about the planet Venus.
The Pioneer Venus project was part of the Pioneer program consisting of two spacecraft, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter and the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe, launched to Venus in 1978. The program was managed by NASA's Ames Research Center.
The Pioneer Venus Multiprobe, also known as Pioneer Venus 2 or Pioneer 13, was a spacecraft launched in 1978 to explore Venus as part of NASA's Pioneer program. This part of the mission included a spacecraft bus which was launched from Earth carrying one large and three smaller probes, which after separating penetrated the Venusian atmosphere at a different location, returning data as they descended into the planet's thick atmosphere. The entry occurred on December 9, 1978.
Venus Express (VEX) was the first Venus exploration mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). Launched in November 2005, it arrived at Venus in April 2006 and began continuously sending back science data from its polar orbit around Venus. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, the main objective of the mission was the long term observation of the Venusian atmosphere. The observation over such long periods of time had never been done in previous missions to Venus, and was key to a better understanding of the atmospheric dynamics. ESA concluded the mission in December 2014.
Venera 7 was a Soviet spacecraft, part of the Venera series of probes to Venus. When it landed on the Venusian surface on 15 December 1970, it became the first spacecraft to soft land on another planet and the first to transmit data from there back to Earth.
Venera 4, also designated 4V-1 No.310, was a probe in the Soviet Venera program for the exploration of Venus. The probe comprised a lander, designed to enter the Venusian atmosphere and parachute to the surface, and a carrier/flyby spacecraft, which carried the lander to Venus and served as a communications relay for it.
Venera 13 was part of the Soviet Venera program meant to explore Venus.
Venera 14 was a probe in the Soviet Venera program for the exploration of Venus.
Akatsuki, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter (VCO) and Planet-C, is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) space probe tasked with studying the atmosphere of Venus. It was launched aboard an H-IIA 202 rocket on 20 May 2010, but failed to enter orbit around Venus on 6 December 2010. After the craft orbited the Sun for five years, engineers successfully placed it into an alternative Venusian elliptic orbit on 7 December 2015 by firing its attitude control thrusters for 20 minutes and made it the first Japanese satellite orbiting Venus.
Observations of the planet Venus include those in antiquity, telescopic observations, and from visiting spacecraft. Spacecraft have performed various flybys, orbits, and landings on Venus, including balloon probes that floated in the atmosphere of Venus. Study of the planet is aided by its relatively close proximity to the Earth, compared to other planets, but the surface of Venus is obscured by an atmosphere opaque to visible light.
The atmosphere of Venus is primarily of supercritical carbon dioxide and is much denser and hotter than that of Earth. The temperature at the surface is 740 K, and the pressure is 93 bar (1,350 psi), roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) under water on Earth. The Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds of sulfuric acid, making optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface impossible. Information about the topography has been obtained exclusively by radar imaging. Aside from carbon dioxide, the other main component is nitrogen. Other chemical compounds are present only in trace amounts.
Sara Seager is a Canadian–American astronomer and planetary scientist. She is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is known for her work on extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. She is the author of two textbooks on these topics, and has been recognized for her research by Popular Science, Discover Magazine, Nature, and TIME Magazine. Seager was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 citing her theoretical work on detecting chemical signatures on exoplanet atmospheres and developing low-cost space observatories to observe planetary transits.
The surface of Venus is dominated by volcanic features and has more volcanoes than any other planet in the Solar System. It has a surface that is 90% basalt, and about 65% of the planet consists of a mosaic of volcanic lava plains, indicating that volcanism played a major role in shaping its surface. There are more than 1,000 volcanic structures and possible periodic resurfacing of Venus by floods of lava. The planet may have had a major global resurfacing event about 500 million years ago, from what scientists can tell from the density of impact craters on the surface. Venus has an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, with a pressure that is 90 times that of Earth's atmosphere.
The possibility of life on Venus is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to Venus's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no definitive evidence has been found of past or present life there. In the early 1960s, studies conducted via spacecraft demonstrated that the current Venusian environment is extreme compared to Earth's. Studies continue to question whether life could have existed on the planet's surface before a runaway greenhouse effect took hold, and whether a relict biosphere could persist high in the modern Venusian atmosphere.
SPRITE was a proposed Saturn atmospheric probe mission concept of the NASA. SPRITE is a design for an atmospheric entry probe that would travel to Saturn from Earth on its own cruise stage, then enter the atmosphere of Saturn, and descend taking measurements in situ.
Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP) is a mission concept by the aerospace companies Northrop Grumman and LGarde for a powered, long endurance, semi-buoyant inflatable aircraft that would explore the upper atmosphere of planet Venus for biosignatures as well as perform atmospheric measurements. The inflatable aircraft has a trapezoidal shape that is sometimes called delta wing or flying wing, and would have dual electric-driven propellers that would be stowed during atmospheric entry.
Photon is a satellite bus based on Rocket Lab's kick stage.