The Orbital Index

Issue No. 120 | Jun 9, 2021

🚀 🌍 🛰

 ¶Two Discovery-class missions are headed for Venus. NASA, making good on ex-administrator Bridenstine’s recommendation to send spacecraft back to our closest neighbor, announced funding for (a somewhat unexpected) two missions to Venus—its first missions dedicated to the planet in 30+ years. VERITAS and DAVINCI+ will journey to Venus circa 2028-2030 where they will spend multiple years studying its atmosphere, mapping its surface, and increasing our understanding of how exoplanets form and develop (video). DAVINCI+ will perform two fly-bys culminating in a planetary probe descending through the thick, inhospitable atmosphere to capture data and high-resolution images on its way to the surface of the Alpha Regio highlands. DAVINCI’s carrier craft will observe the Venusian atmosphere with a four-camera array, and drop its probe during the second fly-by to make a descent to the surface where it could land intact and function for up to 17 minutes. The probe, equipped with a Mass Spectrometer, a Tunable Laser Spectrometer, a descent imager, and a suite of environmental sensors (these will provide a descent profile for use as a baseline for the mission’s atmospheric science), borrows heavily from the success of Mars Science Lab’s instruments. On its dive down to the surface, it will test the atmosphere for the presence of Phosphine. The mission will host the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer (CUVIS) technology demonstration which may help understand why clouds on Venus absorb an unexpectedly large amount of UV. Meanwhile, VERITAS will orbit Venus using SAR to map the surface down to 2 mm resolution using interferometry (additionally generating a height map) to detect any tectonic activity and study the geologic history of a planet that developed very differently than Earth. VERITAS will also map the planet’s surface emissivity, and has been tuned to analyze surface elements despite their average temperature of 460° C. VERITAS will carry the Deep Space Atomic Clock 2 demonstration, which will eventually help spacecraft navigate autonomously in deep space. Both missions intend to use Doppler analysis to measure the planet’s gravitational characteristics, a staple of NASA’s deep space missions. Related: NASA did not pick the missions proposed to go to Triton and Io. Like DAVINCI, the Io mission may be improved and resubmitted in the next round of Discovery-class proposals. However, a low energy transfer window to Triton will not occur again for another 13 years, so the TRIDENT mission proposal is likely on hold for the time being.
 VERITAS and DAVINCI+
 ¶News in brief. China’s Tianzhou-2 cargo craft brought supplies and fuel to the soon-to-be-crewed Tianhe; a small piece of space debris damaged Canadarm2 on the ISS, leaving a 5 mm hole in its thermal blanket and puncturing the internal boom, but the robotic arm remains functional; Launcher raised $11 million of Series-A funding—they are targeting a first launch of their small satellite "Launcher Light" vehicle in 2024; LeoLabs raised a$65M Series B for their space situational awareness radar network; a Cargo Dragon carried experiments and a set of Redwire rollup solar panels to the ISS on a brand new Falcon 9 booster, the first new booster in 20 launches; a Falcon 9 launched a SiriusXM SXM-8 satellite; Astra announced the acquisition of electric propulsion startup Apollo Fusion using funds from its upcoming SPAC reverse-IPO; New Zealand became the eleventh country to sign onto the Artemis Accords; Cosmonauts began the process of decommissioning the Russian Pirs module early Wednesday; and, Jeff Bezos will ride to suborbital space on the first crewed flight of New Shepard.