BALLOON-BASED GEOPHYSICAL INVESTIGATIONS AT VENUS

Abstract:

After a long hiatus in Venus exploration by NASA, new exploration approaches using floating platforms have emerged that will help answer fundamental hypotheses about the planet. VeGa, the 1985 Soviet balloon mission and only aerial mission to have flown at Venus, had a limited payload focused on the optical and dynamical properties of the atmosphere. Aerobots (robotic balloons), which are much more capable than the VeGa balloons, have the potential for transforming our knowledge of the interior of our sister planet.

In this presentation, we will describe aerial geophysical methods that can probe the Venus interior as well as recent progress in adapting these methods for deployment on aerobots. Aerial surveys of infrasound emission from Venus will enable a search for active volcanism and seismicity with a sensitivity for very small quakes because of the strong coupling of seismic energy into the dense atmosphere. Other geophysics methods exploit the relative proximity of aerobots to the surface of Venus (~50km) compared to orbiters. Aerial surveys of magnetic fields will drive down the detection limit for remanent magnetism by orders of magnitude. Electromagnetic sounding can exploit the Schumann resonance to characterize regional variations in the thickness of the lithosphere. Finally, gravity measurements with spatial resolution of 50 km can be used to distinguish between models of volcano-tectonic features such as the coronae. The collective contribution of these methods to unraveling the nature and origin of the Venus interior will be assessed.

This is Pre-Decisional Information – For Planning and Discussion Purposes Only. Part of the research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). Copyright 2020. All rights reserved. Government sponsorship is acknowledged