Born out of the winds of imagination, an innovative new project to deliver a swarm of small spacecraft for exploring the dense atmosphere of Venus, just an encouraging financial boost from NASA’s $ 500,000 dollar funding.
According to a NASA press release, scientists from the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI) designed these small ascending sensors to be aptly named Lofted Environmental and Atmospheric Venus Sensors (LEAVES), which will be distributed like cosmic kites to Venus, and then sending data back to Earth.
Although the idea may sound a bit far-fetched, the space agency believes that this concept can reap rewards due to the cheap and disposable nature of the mission if they take into account the hostile components of the upper and middle Venus atmosphere and the neighboring country’s absurdly high surface take. air pressure.
Researchers who proposed LEAVES as a viable project explained that the high-tech machines would fall off a spacecraft and descend gently through the dangerous sulfuric acid clouds.
Each miniature sensor platform will detect chemicals and compounds that are detected during the descent and transmit the information back to the orbiting probe. Due to the dangerous nine-hour long fall, this flight will end with their downfall, caused by dropping too low to obtain meaningful data or eventually disintegrating via the toxic levels of carbonyl sulfide, hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide on the planet.
As described in the press release, “With a mass per unit of only 130 g, this concept is ideal as a secondary payload or enhancement for a Venus orbit mission and is capable of capturing important data on the dynamic state and composition. of Venus’ atmosphere that is difficult to obtain with remote techniques.This Phase II effort will perfect the Phase I findings through high-fidelity aerothermal simulations of orbital deployment, recording and flight, and practical demonstrations of improved approaches to communication, detection, and structural configurations. “
NASA’s allocated funds will help Jeffrey Balcerski and his OAI team in Cleveland refine their proposal for ‘swarm’ and enable the development of technology with the expectation that they will be selected for a real mission in the near future to Venus in search of microbial life amidst the toxic cloud cover.
It’s all part of NASA’s $ 5 million support for unorthodox early-stage presentations to advance new approaches to space exploration, and is one of only seven studies selected by the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program.
“Creativity is the key to future space exploration, and advancing revolutionary ideas that may sound strange will prepare us for new missions and new reconnaissance approaches in the coming decades,” said Jim Reuter, co-administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Directorate. (STMD), said.