May 9, 2005

Let's send a rover to Venus

Could we have as much success landing a rover to explore Venus as we did with our other closest neighbor, Mars? Venus is a much tougher environment than Mars, but NASA still has an interest in exploring there. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Venus is about 90 times greater than Earth's. A Venicean day lasts 117 Earth days, daytime temperatures reach 450 degrees C, and the dense atmosphere is acidic. A ground-traveling Venus rover will have to be extremely acid-proof, heat-proof, leak-proof, and pretty dumb, because at such high temperatures, it is not currently possible to operate electronics on a ground-based Venus rover. Because of this, NASA is designing an aircraft to orbit Venus and hold the rover's electronics to process data and communication. The orbiting aircraft would take advantage of the dense atmosphere, using wings and a propeller. The orbiter would float up in the cooler altitudes and collect the intense solar energy, which should keep it powered indefinitely. Link.

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