Hesperos: A geophysical mission to Venus
Abstract
The Hesperos mission proposed in this paper is a mission to Venus to investigate the interior structure and the current level of activity. The main questions to be answered with this mission are whether Venus has an internal structure and composition similar to Earth and if Venus is still tectonically active. To do so the mission will consist of two elements: an orbiter to investigate the interior and changes over longer periods of time and a balloon floating at an altitude between 40 and 60\~km to investigate the composition of the atmosphere. The mission will start with the deployment of the balloon which will operate for about 25 days. During this time the orbiter acts as a relay station for data communication with Earth. Once the balloon phase is finished the orbiter will perform surface and gravity gradient mapping over the course of 7 Venus days. This mission proposal is the result of the Alpbach Summer School and the post-Alpbach week.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1803.06652,
title = {Hesperos: A geophysical mission to Venus},
author = {Robert-Jan Koopmans and Agata Białek and Anthony Donohoe and María Fernández Jiménez and Barbara Frasl and Antonio Gurciullo and Andreas Kleinschneider and Anna Łosiak and Thurid Mannel and Iñigo Muñoz Elorza and Daniel Nilsson and Marta Oliveira and Paul Magnus Sørensen-Clark and Ryan Timoney and Iris van Zelst},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1803.06652},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
The article was submitted to Advances in Space Research in November 2016. It was accepted with major revisions. Due to unavailability of the team after the end of the project, the paper wasn't fully revised and the submission was withdrawn. The current version includes most of the revisions