Time for a memory jog. Do you remember that back in 2020, Rocket Lab announced plans to launch the first private mission to Venus. A search through the blog here shows the mission apparently slipped from it's original 2023 launch goal until 2025 as noted in a report in Space.com published in June 2023.
The latest news is from today,
also at Space.com, and reveals that the current target is in summer of '26.
"We missed our January 2025 launch window and now wait until the next one summer 2026," said MIT's Sara Seager, a professor of planetary science and leader of the Morningstar Missions to Venus team – a series of planned missions designed to investigate the possibility of life in Venus' clouds.
Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, California, report progress in installing a heat shield on what's the first private spacecraft targeted for Venus. The mission, originally intended to launch on Rocket Lab's low lift Electron rocket, has now been upgraded to their bigger Neutron. The Neutron has yet to fly but that's looking to be getting closer to its first flight tests.
The goal is to survive the hellish temperatures of Venus' atmosphere down to the surface, and use instruments designed to measure autofluorescence and backscattered polarized radiation to detect the presence of organic molecules in the clouds.
To survive the temperatures that it will be exposed to, the probe will be protected by a shield NASA imaginatively named HEEET, or Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology developed at Ames.
Engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center complete a fit check of the two halves of a space capsule that will study the clouds of Venus for signs of life. (Image credit: NASA/Brandon Torres Navarrete)
HEET is a textured material covering the bottom of the capsule, a woven heat shield designed to protect spacecraft from temperatures up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit (2482 degrees C).
Much like how the current landers on the moon have short expected lifespans because the temperatures are beyond what semiconductors have typically been rated to survive, the Venus probe (apparently unnamed) has this mission profile published. Times are in seconds. The right side of the curve is at 1 hour, 3600 seconds. It seems, though, the observations will be long over by that time.
The science phase of the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus targets the Venus cloud layer between 72 and 97 miles altitude, enabling around 330 seconds - 5-1/2 minutes - of science observations. (Image credit: NASA/Ames Research Center)
How many years and how much money has been spent to get 330 seconds of data from Venus? I don't know but it's a bit of perspective on space science. Brings to mind the Ranger lunar probes from the early 1960s, flying into the moon taking pictures and beaming them back down until they crashed into the moon.
Strange, but things must be getting serious about other planets, read a piece over at RT this morning how the Russian's have made a proposal to SpaceX to partner up on getting people to Mars.
ReplyDeleteDidn't the Russians mock Musk to his face when he sought to partner with them?
DeleteThey did according to Musk. Its a kind of humorous story too. But like with everything else, ie, called lies the media spews, starting to get the impression not all is as it we are told to believe. And so, now the Russians extend a pretty serious proposition, one they are capable of standing behind. They been space farers long as anyone, they build excellent rocket engines, have advanced space experience, and they seem to have become very affluent people.
DeleteNever forget the Russian Venera probes, which gave us the only photos of Venus surface thus far.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why the title uses the word Private. Like the current bunch of lunar landers - not the First, just the first privately funded.
DeleteThat woven heatshield may be useful for hypersonic weapons. The Rooskies may have invented it, stolen it, or surpassed it.
ReplyDeleteWhy are we seeking organics on Venus when we can't master them on Earth? According to Genesis 1:1 and following information, we know where life came from, its current state and future outlook. An honest appraisal of this information should result in redirection of resources from current misallocation...but this will not happen, leading to the outcome described in the given information, which describes the prudent reallocation.
Stefan v.
"Why are we seeking organics on Venus when we can't master them on Earth?"
DeleteThe optimistic view of that is they're just doing self-reinforcing studies on their First Law - evolution by natural selection. Then there's the not-so-positive idea that they're looking for new bio weapons that nobody on Earth knows about yet.
Sort of like creating new pandemics in "gain of function" virus labs, only possibly worse.
Is this just a marketing project by Rocket Lab? That would be OK but if you are going to make the effort, why not something that counts. Instead of burning up in a couple of minutes, why not an orbiter and get some data, you can pick the instruments.
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't know. When I first heard of it, I was pretty sure it was a self-promotion from them. It talked about them using their Photon upper stage, which is a strap on module for a payload that slowly and gradually accelerates the payload until it can make the desired trajectory. It's still a small payload, because their Electron rockets are limited to roughly 600 lbs to LEO including the Photon upper stage.
DeleteThe only thing that makes me wonder if that's true is the involvement of Ames and MIT. I have no idea if Rocket Lab contracted them to design the probe or if some other company did.
Every once in a while you run across an article on high temperature semiconductors suitable for computation at 500C, but it appears there isn't much interest. A pity, a long mission lander or ideally a rover would be pretty neat (almost said *cool* there...). There are just a few niche uses: Venus probes, inside nuclear reactors, etc.
ReplyDeleteVacuum tubes could withstand the temperatures, but are heavy, bulky, and relatively fragile. I vaguely recall the Soviets had some progress long after the West had abandoned the technology.
MEMs seem to have not gone anywhere.
The only commercial use for really high temp semiconductors seems to be on car engines, and they either do some tricks to get away with lower rated parts or some other form of "cheating." I guess there are some sensors on drills for oil rigs or other things, it's just a small market.
DeleteAt least its a down hill ride to Venus. Too bad wasn't a way to blow off 99% of its atmosphere, because its just inside the goldilocks habitable zone.
ReplyDelete