Exploring Venus: A NASA Robotic Target

After more than 20 years of benign neglect, the Venus is once more drawing NASA's eye for ambitious new missions, including exploration flotilla a ground robot, planetary airplane and orbiting manned spacecraft. The potential mission to Venus could investigate its surface from up-close for the first time in several decades, a NASA scientist said.

"Recently there has been a renaissance in looking at proposals to study Venus," researcher Geoffrey A. Landis at NASA's John Glenn Research Center in Ohio told Space.com. "One very good reason is that there has been a renewed interest in study of the atmospheres and climates of planets, and being the planet that is most like the Earth in size learning more about the atmosphere of Venus may help us learn more about the atmosphere (and climate) of the Earth."

There hasn't been a dedicated U.S. mission sent to Venus since the Magellan probe in 1989, but that doesn't mean the planet has not seen its share of visitors. The European Space Agency currently has an orbiter called Venus Express circling Venus, and Japan launched its spacecraft Akatsuki (Japanese for "Dawn") toward the planet in May. Several NASA probes have flown by Venus in the last 20 years, but only as a pit stop on the way to other planets in the solar system.

Venus also saw visiting probe from the United States and Russia the 1960s, '70s and '80s, even some landings on the Venusian surface. But those probes were extremely short-lived because of the crushing pressure and extreme heat of Venus' atmosphere.

And after two decades of technological advancements, an extended robotic landing on Venus is now possible, Landis said. Today's high-temperature electronics, power and cooling systems could allow a ground probe to explore for longer than two hours.

more

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/08/venus-future-nasa-target.html

Venus is a fascinating planet to me and has always held some high level of interest from NASA. The idea of another landing or some type of plane flying through the atmosphere could produce unknown scientific data to study for years.

Check out this summary of a proposed manned Venus flyby from the Apollo Applications Project of the early 1970s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_Venus_Flyby