Heat-Exchange Driven Aircraft for Low Altitude and Surface Exploration of Venus: Phase 1 Study Final Report

Exploration of Venus below its clouds has long been impaired by the planet’s massive CO2 atmosphere, corrosive trace gases, and high opacity. Except for a few narrow spectral windows, the 20 km thick global cloud cover blocks light over the entirety of the ultraviolet through thermal infrared spectrum, impeding orbital studies of the surface and lower portion of the atmosphere. In addition to the cloud opacity, Rayleigh scattering through 80 bars of CO2 in the lower 40 km of the atmosphere results in a Rayleigh scattering depth between 25 and1 in the visible through near infrared portion of the spectrum. That optically thick scattering, combined with the uniform angular distribution of the illumination provided by the highly diffusing clouds overhead greatly reduces even very large surface albedo contrasts (Crisp, pers. Comm.). To date, the surface has only been mapped via synthetic aperture radar by the Magellan mission at scales of 120 to 300 m/pixel. In addition to contributing to the difficulty of performing studies of the surface from orbit, the extreme temperatures and pressures at the surface also create a challenging environment to utilize a lander for exploration. The longest-lived lander on Venus’ surface survived for 2 hours. Hence, limited access to observe the surface and lower atmosphere of Venus arguably puts the surface and lower atmosphere of Venus as one of the least explored regions of the inner Solar System.