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NASA Targets Venus, Asteroids With Potential Missions
coondoggie writes: NASA this week picked five possible contenders for a relatively low-cost robotic mission to space. The five candidates from a batch of 27 –include Venus, near-Earth object and asteroid operations – will ultimately be whittled down to one or two that will cost approximately $500 million, not including launch vehicle or post-launch operations, NASA stated. The DAVINCI probe would "study the chemical composition of Venus' atmosphere during a 63-minute descent. It would answer scientific questions that have been considered high priorities for many years, such as whether there are volcanoes active today on the surface of Venus and how the surface interacts with the atmosphere of the planet." A longer-range spacecraft called Lucy would "perform the first reconnaissance of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, objects thought to hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system."
The one mission I think could be really excellent would be an atmospheric probe of Venus that could float around the upper atmosphere where it is at a pressure nearly equivalent to earth. So far most probes haven't lasted very long, so it would be an engineering challenge with the potential to send back some really amazing images from the cloud layer. And forget mars, venus is the most promising place in the Solar System for its terraforming and habitability potential, *all you need to do* is remove enough Carbon from the atmosphere and you end up with plenty of oxygen. An airship could explore, take samples and test a CO2 converter. Heck just throw a plant on there and see if you can keep it alive.