(Newswire.net — December 21, 2014) — While plans for sending humans to Mars are still in development, NASA plans to send astronauts to Venus. With its sulphuric acid rain, lightning bolts and temperatures of nearly 1000F, it is hard to imagine anyone would consider sending space explorers to Venus. However scientists from National Space Agency recently developed this idea, according to IEEE Advanced Technology magazine.
Aerospace engineer at NASA Langley Research Center Chris Jones told IEEE Spectrum that he believes not many people have gone and looked at the “relatively much more hospitable atmosphere and how you might tackle operating there for a while.”
“The vast majority of people, when they hear the idea of going to Venus and exploring, think of the surface, where it’s hot enough to melt lead and the pressure is the same as if you were almost a mile underneath the ocean,” Jones told IEEE Spectrum.
NASA developed a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC) which aims to explore Venus’ upper atmosphere. It is always sunny above the clouds, so a fleet of solar-powered aircraft may build up a whole cloud city in the future, NASA says.
HAVOC mission in its early phase is set to send a robot to explore the atmosphere of Venus. In the next phase, NASA will deploy shuttle with two astronauts on a 30-day-stay mission to Earth’s neighbour. The scientists should collect data from the Venus’ upper atmosphere and investigate possibility of creating a scientists’ colony.
Later on, a crew of another two astronauts would spend a year in the atmosphere, and someday a human colony in a cloud city might be established, according to NASA.
HAVOC mission’s remarkable Zeppelin-like vehicle that would carry out human crew across Venus orbit is designed to be nearly 130 meters long, with a small 21-cubic-meter habitat for the crew. It’s top shall be covered with more than 1,000 square meters of solar panels.
Because it is closer to the Sun, Venus gets 40 percent more solar power than the Earth and 240 percent more than Mars. The mission to Venus is easier to comply than mission to Mars because astronauts would not land on the surface.
“Traditionally, say if you’re going to Mars, you talk about ‘entry, descent, and landing,’ or EDL,” explained NASA scientist Dale Arney. “Obviously, in our case, ‘landing’ would represent a significant failure of the mission, so instead we have ‘entry, descent, and inflation,’ or EDI.”
“Venus has value as a destination in and of itself for exploration and colonization,” said Jones. “But it’s also complementary to current Mars plans.” He added, “There are things that you would need to do for a Mars mission, but we see a little easier path through Venus.”