Private Space Missions: Is Venus Next?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Venus from Mattias Malmer/NASA/JPL..

NBC news reports that a privately-funding space probe could visit Venus as early as next year as phase one of a three-part mission. The goal of the Venus Life Finder Mission, involving MIT alumni and Rocket Lab, is to search for signs of life or microbial-type life. This effort is another encouraging sign of increased interest in scientific missions throughout the solar system.

An earlier press release on the Venus Life Finder site stated:

The Venus Life Finder Missions are a series of focused astrobiology mission concepts to search for habitability, signs of life, and life itself in the Venus atmosphere. While people have speculated on life in the Venus clouds for decades, we are now able to act with cost-effective and highly-focused missions. A major motivation are unexplained atmospheric chemical anomalies, including the “mysterious UV-absorber”, tens of ppm O2,  SO2 and H2O vertical abundance profiles, the possible presence of PH3 and NH3, and the unknown composition of Mode 3 cloud particles. These anomalies, which have lingered for decades, might be tied to habitability and life’s activities or be indicative of unknown chemistry itself worth exploring.  Our proposed series of VLF missions aim to study Venus’ cloud particles and to continue where the pioneering in situ probe missions from nearly four decades ago left off. The world is poised on the brink of a revolution in space science. Our goal is not to supplant any other efforts but to take advantage of an opportunity for high-risk, high-reward science, which stands to possibly answer one of the greatest scientific mysteries of all, and in the process pioneer a new model of private/public partnership in space exploration.

It has been more than a decade since a government has sent a mission to Venus. The last US mission to Venus was the Magellan launched in May 1989, which started to orbit Venus in 1990 and continued to do so for four years. The European Space Agency sent the Venus Express to the planet in November 2005, while Japan sent the Akatsuki in May 2010.

Interest continues among government parties. For example, just last year NASA announced two new missions to Venus:

— DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) to measure the composition of Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved, as well as determine whether the planet ever had an ocean. The mission consists of a descent sphere that will plunge through the planet’s thick atmosphere, making precise measurements of noble gases and other elements to understand why Venus’ atmosphere is a runaway hothouse compared the Earth’s. It will also will return the first high resolution pictures of the unique geological features on Venus known as “tesserae,” which may be comparable to Earth’s continents, suggesting that Venus has plate tectonics.

— VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) to map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and understand why it developed so differently than Earth. In addition, it will map infrared emissions from Venus’ surface to map its rock type, which is largely unknown, and determine whether active volcanoes are releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. 

Source: Venuscloudlife.com.

How Many Satellites Are Too Many?

Posted on by onespaceman2000

You may have remembered my earlier post showing all of the items already in orbit around the Earth. Well, it appears Elon Musk believes we can handle billions of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). And while the current number of orbiting satellites is only in the thousands, Mr. Musk’s SpaceX has already placed 1,700 Starlink satellites in LEO, with plans for a total of 42,000 such satellites under the program.

Not everyone agrees with unchecked growth. Josef Aschbacher, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) director-general, stated, “You have one person owning half of the active satellites in the world. That’s quite amazing. De facto, he is making the rules.” I agree with the ESA about the need for some rules in this area given the rapid growth. And we may need to look a little deeper into that “billions” number. Mr. Musk has been known to overstate things.

Mr. Musk is part of the move fast and break things club. Yet that can lead to problems when the things breaking up are expensive satellites leaving debris in their wake. We may need to find a better way.

Source: October 24, 2021 launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 Starlink satellites to orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. See the SpaceX press release, which contains this image.

What Else Can be Found at Lagrange 2?

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source: Lagrange Points from Wikipedia.

Now that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWSP) has deployed its 21-foot, gold-coated primary mirror, it is in good shape as it heads for the Sun-Earth’s second Lagrange point, known as L2, which is nearly 1 million miles from Earth. However, it will not be the first spacecraft to park in this spot to conduct a scientific mission.

I looked around to get a good inventory of what was operating, and will be operating, at L2 when JWST arrives and found the best listing on Wikipedia. Here is the inventory:

Past missions at L2:

  • From 2001 to 2010: NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observed the cosmic microwave background.
  • From 2003 to 2004: NASA’s WIND studied radio waves and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth’s magnetosphere (now in L1).
  • From 2009 to 2013: The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory sifted through star-forming clouds to trace the path by which potentially life-forming molecules, such as water, form.
  • From 2009 to 2013: The ESA’s Planck spacecraft observatory mapped the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background at microwave and infrared frequencies, with high sensitivity and small angular resolution. 
  • From 2011 to 2012: Chinese National Space Programs’s Chang’e 2 tested the Chinese tracking and control network (after first serving as a lunar probe).

Current missions at L2:

  • Since 2014: The ESA Gaia probe has been measuring the positions, distances and motions of stars, with a mission to construct a 3D space catalog containing approximately 1 billion astronomical objects (stars, planets, comets, asteroids, quasars, and more).
  • Since 2019: The joint Russian-German high-energy astrophysics observatory Spektr-RG has been conducting a seven-year X-ray survey, the first in the medium X-ray band less than 10 keV energies, and the first to map an estimated 100,000 galaxy clusters.

Of course, there are future missions planned for L2, and plenty of craft operating in L1, L4, and L5. That will be a story or two for another time.