Venus Cloud Explorer: A New Frontiers Class Mission to Explore the Habitability of Venus

A comprehensive exploration of the habitability of Venus involves investigations of conditions during the early history of the planet, during which the planet may have had an ocean, studies of the contemporary habitability of the Venus cloud layer and characterization of processes of material and energy transport that are necessary for sustaining habitability in this environment. Our New Frontiers class mission concept effectively addresses these science objectives through two prime elements: a variable-altitude balloon platform (aerobot) carrying in-situ instrumentation for precise measurements of atmospheric and aerosol composition, dynamics, remanent magnetism, and seismically-generate infrasound waves, and an orbiter for supporting the aerobot with data relay, localization and context multispectral imaging. The Venus Flagship mission concept studied in support of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey (1) included similar capabilities but our Venus Cloud Explorer team has focused on both refocusing the science that can be accomplished by the aerobot and reducing its physical size to achieve a competitive mission in the New Frontiers class. The new and enhanced scientific capabilities include sub-cloud near infrared night time imaging which will enable investigations of both recent and contemporary volcanic activity and the chemistry of the ancient tessera terrains with a possible record of an early water rich era on Venus. Key to driving the cost of this mission concept into the range of competitive New Frontiers missions is reducing the mass of the instrument science module (gondola) in the aerobot by a factor of two relative to the Flagship study. This reduction impacts favorably the mass and cost of every other system element including the mass that has to be delivered to Venus. These reductions are accomplished by applying small spacecraft technologies under development at JPL, design innovations, power reductions, and stringent cost-benefit analyses. (1) P. Beauchamp et al., 2021 IEEE Aerospace Conference (50100), 2021, pp. 1-18, doi: 10.1109/AERO50100.2021.9438335.