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NASA Targets Venus, Asteroids With Potential Missions

Posted by Soulskill on from the conquering-the-solar-system-with-our-pathetic-robot-army dept.

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."

47 comments

  1. Nocturnal emissions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Carlin? Is that you?

    1. Re: Nocturnal emissions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Emissions are for cows.cows say moooooo.mooooo.moooo says cow.you greenhouse cows.

  2. More corporate welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    The Republicans are destroying our society by taking so much money from th people at gunpoint to give to corporations.

    1. Re: More corporate welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, the moderators here are so CONservative. So CONservative.

      It is disgusting to support taking money from working families to give to corporation. I guess you sleep at night by lying to yourselves by calling those corporations people.

    2. Re:More corporate welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WIC provides $41.44 per month for food for infants. For the cost of this Republcian scam, we could afford to provide 120,000,000 additional infant-months of food with WIC. Republicans are literally starving babies to do this.

    3. Re: More corporate welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Republicans care more about technology than people. Republicans are not whole people.

    4. Re: More corporate welfare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're math is wrong. They're only starving 12 million babies rather than 120 million.

    5. Re:More corporate welfare by kellymcdonald78 · · Score: 1

      My god, what an evil person you are. Spending time typing on a computer while babies are starving to death? Paying for internet access when that money could do so much. If you actually believed what you wrote, you would have sold your computer and everything you don't need to survive, and spent every waking moment to raise money to feed the starving.

    6. Re:More corporate welfare by barakn · · Score: 3

      The defense budget is $53 billion dollars a month. That's enough for 1,281,000,000 babies. If you are thinking of trimming the NASA budget instead of the Defense budget, your priorities are completely fucked up.

      --
      "I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
  3. mission "to space"? by turkeydance · · Score: 0

    miss a lot of interesting rocks that way.

    1. Re:mission "to space"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      500 million dollars? That is exactly what Planned Parenthood needs. Time to get your priorities straight and take care of women's health instead of a while male dominated space industry.

  4. PASA one upped them by kamapuaa · · Score: 0

    PASA surprassed this last week by proposing a mamission to the sun. They're going at night.

    --
    Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  5. balloon probe of venus by bigpat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Under study by Northrop Grumman.

    2. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Creating habitable space on Venus would be fairly easy. As you say, the upper atmosphere isn't that bad, so all you need is a balloon, and fortunately a breathable atmosphere doubles as a lifting gas when set among the denser CO2 of the atmosphere outside. You can live among the support structures of your mega-zeppelin.

      Terraforming is a much bleaker prospect though.

      The heat is bad. If you were somehow able to stop all incoming sunlight, completely shut down the radioactive decay feeding Venus' core heat, and remove the atmosphere entirely for maximum radiative cooling, it'd still take about a hundred years for the surface to cool to habitable levels. There's a lot of heat sitting around in the crust.

      The rotation is a worse problem. A Venus day is more than 200 times longer than an Earth day. If you set up an Earthlike climate, it would very quickly stop being Earthlike, as one side boiled and the other froze. You need a very thick atmosphere and strong winds to transport heat evenly. We'd have to resort to some kind of mega-engineering to simulate a day cycle (collossal orbiting mirrors maybe?) because spinning up the entire planet would need magic technology that we can't even imagine.

    3. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Venus could be the most Earthlike planet from size and gravity perspective, but it would also be the most difficult to terraform. As you noted you would have to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and somehow neutralize the less pleasant compounds. Then there is the problem with the fact that it is tidally locked to the sun so one side always faces the sun (or at least it rotates very slowly). So you would either have to somehow engineer the environment to help equalize the temperature between the sides, put a massive solar reflector in orbit to redirect some of the sunlight to the dark side, or live along the border between night/day sides in perpetual gale force windstorm. Mars on the other hand is fairly simple, build/inflate a dome, suck in some outside air, add some plants, add some nitrogen and you've got yourself a habitat and most of the resources you need a short drive away in your rover. A better option for Venus would probably be to try to remove the toxins from the atmosphere, remove a little of the CO2 to try to make the surface a little less hostile, and utilize floating habitats which would move with the atmosphere which circle the planet every 4 days or so. But even that would require far more effort than a Martian habitat.

    4. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      because spinning up the entire planet would need magic technology that we can't even imagine.

      Nothing hard about the theory, it's just that implementing one would be extremely resource intensive (like, well, terraforming a planet).
      One option is carefully calculated bombardment. Hit the planet with enough dense asteroids angled to increase the rotation speed.
      A similar but slower option is that instead of allowing the asteroids to impact Venus, you apply them as high-mass, high-speed, low orbit moons. Most likely, this would decelerate into the previous option unless you add energy to maintain the orbits.

      Both of these are based on the simple physics of spinning bodies. As you bring the mass closer to the axis of rotation, the spin accelerates. However since there is not already a nearby viable mass to bring closer to Venus, we need to provide the orbiting materials from somewhere else first.

      It gets hard with the amount of energy that needs to be added to Venus in rotational form, but enough chemical rockets applied to the asteroid belt could accomplish the feat.

    5. Re:balloon probe of venus by dargaud · · Score: 1

      Deploy a monomolecular sheet (mylar, aluminium, whatever) at L1 between the sun and Venus over 200km diameter, lower the solar output, see if you can get the atmosphere to cool down and condensate.

      --
      Non-Linux Penguins ?
    6. Re:balloon probe of venus by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      *all you need to do* is remove enough Carbon from the atmosphere...

      We are having trouble removing it from Earth's, and we have far less.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    7. Re:balloon probe of venus by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      If we use the progressive-domino-slingshot effect, perhaps we can smash a big icy asteroid into Venus at a angle that gives it a faster rotation, and knocks the carbon out of the atmosphere.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    8. Re:balloon probe of venus by bigpat · · Score: 1

      *all you need to do* is remove enough Carbon from the atmosphere...

      We are having trouble removing it from Earth's, and we have far less.

      The Earth used to have a lot more carbon in the atmosphere until all these pesky living things started photosynthesizing.

    9. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So all that stands between the explorers and a plunge a high-pressure hell is a balloon skin? This balloon is floating around in an atmosphere with sulfuric acid rain mind you.

      As far as terraforming, the other AC covered some key points, but another issue is the mystery of why there are no visible craters from asteroids. One hypothesis is that Venus occasionally undergoes catastrophic volcanism, where the entire planet is resurfaced with molten lava. I wouldn't want to be there when that happens.

    10. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So "all we need" is something like 100 million years and billion gigatons of biomass to remove *both the carbon and the sulphuric acid* in the atmosphere. A biomass which, for most of that time won't be able to live on the planetary surface.

      Right then, a walk in the park!

    11. Re:balloon probe of venus by dryeo · · Score: 1

      There's a severe lack of hydrogen on Venus, so no water and much too much oxygen if it is possible to remove the carbon.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    12. Re:balloon probe of venus by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Those pesky living things depend on hydrogen, in the form of H2O, of which there is a severe lack of on Venus.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    13. Re: balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'll need a moon in orbit the o maintain the diurnal rotation.

      "That's no moon..."

    14. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Plants photosynthesizing usually turns CO2 into Oxygen (the plants absorb and utilize the carbon). That would have been very bad as Earths early atmosphere is believed to have had vast quantities of CO2, turning that into oxygen would have made life on Earth much more "interesting" as in high concentrations of oxygen things burn very easily and energetically. A simple forest fire would turn an area into a massive blowtorch, Heck, diamonds and some rocks will burn in a pure oxygen environment. From what I understand most of Earths CO2 was turned into sedimentary rocks like limestone by marine microorganisms.

    15. Re:balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Smashing Venus with asteroids over and over to make it spin would work, yes, but by the time you'd supplied enough angular momentum that way, you'd also have supplied enough energy to have the crust boiling and created a new atmosphere of rock vapour.

      That would slow down other aspects of the terraforming project quite a lot...

    16. Re: balloon probe of venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite a bit of H2 in Sulfuric acid form. Real challenge is the heat and pressure at the surface.

  6. Send a probe to Uranus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To see how dirty it is. Or maybe just for a "feel good" mission.

  7. Obligatory xkcd by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

    https://xkcd.com/1456/ (title text)

    1. Re:Obligatory xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you.

    2. Re:Obligatory xkcd by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      Some years ago, Jerry Pournelle pointed out that we are farther away from being able to land a man on the moon than we were in 1960. And since he said that, the respect-for-science problem has gotten even worse.

    3. Re:Obligatory xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a rare xkcd cartoon I cannot understand (maybe it's ironic and I'm becoming Dutch).

      Also, the alt-text seems to refer to some situation I'm not familiar with...

    4. Re:Obligatory xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.explainxkcd.com/wik...

    5. Re:Obligatory xkcd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks, though I find the need to have a site like that (and obviously it was need this time) somewhat depressing.

      Also, I fail to understand while a President would backtrack in his intentions. It's just like the Everest, people die going there, but we go anyway. Whether Venus can or not be terraformed, I guess some daredevils will try to land there.

      And about to bring "a" man back alive from the moon while many die, well, this total Politics BS, sorry. I even find people dying in car accidents absurd. That totally shows you're a monkey, if you cannot control a technology well enough to make it work as desired and have to settle to some "that will do" results.

  8. Ballooning in Venus by Crowd+Computing · · Score: 2

    While the surface is hell, I remember reading somewhere that the upper atmosphere of Venus is actually quite balmy. With its thick atmosphere, Venus would be the perfect place to launch an airship or other lighter than air vehicle. Maybe it can support not just balloons but even a floating "air" station that seems like the better alternative to a Martian space colony.

    1. Re:Ballooning in Venus by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      A manned mission to Venus was on the drawing boards in the early 1970's, including a Russian flyby of Venus on the way to Mars.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby

    2. Re:Ballooning in Venus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      isn't Venus (towards the sun) the opposite direction of mars (further from the sun)

    3. Re:Ballooning in Venus by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 1

      Depends on how the planets are aligned. The shortest distance between Earth and Mars happens every two years. Subsequently, the launch window for a direct flight to Mars is every two years. A flyby of Venus provides enough gravity assist to approach Mars from a different trajectory. The Russian Vega probes flew past Venus on their way to the Halley's Comet in 1986.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program

    4. Re:Ballooning in Venus by dryeo · · Score: 1

      A breathable atmosphere is a lifting gas on Venus and the temperature is good at the height where the Venus atmosphere is 1 bar. The big problem is the amount of corrosive acid in the atmosphere. I believe there are pretty good winds at that altitude as well.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  9. Hey, IAU... by pla · · Score: 1, Funny

    "Jupiter trojan asteroids"???

    Wait, you mean the formerly-known-as-a-planet "Jupiter" has failed to clear its orbit?

    Quick, someone let the IAU know! This error in nomenclature simply cannot stand!

  10. Go away greenwow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are an idiot

  11. The Soviets have already done Venus by troon · · Score: 1, Informative

    Including landers, returning pics from the surface. http://mentallandscape.com/V_V...

    --
    Ydco co ,df C erb-y go. a Ekrpat t.fxrapev
  12. Govt Jobs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This post is very useful for the scientists are research and scholars

    Govt Jobs

  13. Settle questions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    such as whether there are volcanoes active today on the surface of Venus

    A non-question. Venus is much more volcanically active than earth. It is covered with volcanoes and lava flows. We have seen their morphological and thermal signatures by the thousands. Move on, for goodness sake. Say you want to explore Venusian volcanoes. Like the recent "discovery" of H2O seeps on Mars. Nothing new. They were noticed 16 years ago!. The recent results just added to the evidence.

  14. Shocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The FBI should be alerted. We need perp walks!