P050-03
Scientific goals for the Venus Flagship Mission's aerobot

Friday, 11 December 2020: 05:36
Virtual
Colin F Wilson1, Martha S Gilmore2, Patricia M Beauchamp3, Sushil K Atreya4, Kevin Baines5, Ed Goolish6, Mark Bullock7, Shannon Curry8, Jeffery Hall9, Jacob Izraelevitz9, Jennifer M Jackson10 and Dragan Nikolic11, (1)University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom, (2)Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, United States, (3)JPL-CALTECH, Pasadena, CA, United States, (4)University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, (5)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (6)NASA Astrobiology Institute, Moffett Field, CA, United States, (7)Southwest Research Institute Boulder, Boulder, United States, (8)Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (9)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (10)Caltech, Seismological Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (11)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Annandale, VA, United States
Abstract:
The Venus Flagship Mission (VFM), a Decadal mission concept study, includes a variable altitude balloon operating at altitudes from 52 km (where p = 0.8 bar, T = 60°C) to 62 km (p = 0.16 bar, T = -20°C). This range allows study both of the convective cloud, found at altitudes < 60 km, and of the convectively stable upper cloud at > 60 km. This range also includes the 20–40°C “habitable zone” of Venus’ clouds, one of the most benign environments known beyond Earth.

The aerobot’s payload is focused in three areas: composition, meteorology, and geophysics. For composition, the key instrument is an aerosol mass spectrometer with nephelometer. It measures both gas composition and aerosol/cloud composition, using dedicated inlets for each. Astrobiology is addressed by a dedicated fluorimetric microscope, which will examine cloud droplets for minute traces of constituents associated with past or present life. Meteorological sensors include air pressure & temperature sensors, radiometer, 3-D anemometer and a radiation dosimeter. Finally, the aerobot carries payloads addressing the geophysics of the solid planet below. An infrasound sensor will search for acoustic waves triggered by tectonic and volcanic activity. Magnetic field measurements will search for remnant crustal magnetism, constrain core size and properties from magnetic field draping, and search for E-M signatures of lightning. A visible imager, taking images of the balloon and Venus cloudscapes, completes the payload.

Venus’ super-rotating winds will carry it around the planet in ~120 hours, depending on altitude. The altitude control system will be used to obtain at least one profile from 52–62 km altitude during each dayside and nightside transit. The mean meridional flow is expected to carry the balloon polewards, but deviations to this will show tidal and other wave activity. This flight plan will allow measurement of how Venus cloud-level atmospheric processes vary with altitude, latitude and local solar time.

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