Cupid's Arrow, Unlocking the Mystery of Venus Evolution
Abstract
This abstract will discuss the Cupid's Arrow mission concept, a small atmospheric probe that would sample Venus' atmosphere to measure the concentrations of noble gases and their isotopic ratios. Noble gases in planetary atmospheres are tracers of geophysical evolution. They can provide information of processes driving atmospheric composition including original supply of volatiles from the solar nebula, delivery of volatiles by asteroids and comets, escape rate of planetary atmospheres, degassing of the interior, and the relative timing of these events in the planet's history. To date, planetary scientists have successfully made these measurements at Earth, Mars, Jupiter and a comet. However, our understanding of Venus' evolution given the elementary and isotopic pattern of noble gases and stable isotopes in its atmosphere, is today poorly known. Specifically, the concentrations of heavy noble gases (Kr, Xe) and their isotopes are mostly unknown, and our knowledge of light noble gases (He, Ne, Ar) is incomplete and imprecise. Cupid's Arrow addresses the Planetary Decadal Survey Goals for Venus, specifically, objective 1A, "How did the atmosphere of Venus form and evolve." Noble gases cannot be sensed remotely, and instead have to be measured in-situ. The Cupids Arrow concept is a small, highly integrated atmospheric probe that could be targeted to fly through the upper atmosphere, collect samples at an altitude below the homopause, then analyze them with a new miniaturized quadrapole ion trap mass spectrometer and transmit the results back to Earth. In this region, atmospheric gases are well-mixed, and samples are representative of their naturally occurring concentrations. The development of this concept has made considerable progress over the past couple of years. A number of technical challenges, including hypervelocity sample fractionation and the compact size of the probe have been addressed using novel techniques. Cupids Arrow will result in a new class of low cost planetary probes for studying other atmospheres such as Titan or Uranus. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the members of the Cupids Arrow study team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The work described in this presentation was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The information provided about the Cupids Arrow mission concept is pre-decisional and is provided for planning and discussion purposes only.
- Publication:
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43rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly. Held 28 January - 4 February
- Pub Date:
- January 2021
- Bibcode:
- 2021cosp...43E.222B