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NASA Crewed Mission To Venus Would Pave Way For Human Mission To Mars

Bruce Dorminey ,

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I cover over-the-horizon technology, aerospace and astronomy.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
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it has very much been under-explored in comparison to its smaller cousin, Mars.”
* A 2023 crewed orbital mission to Venus using Orion and the same SLS architecture.

A crewed mission to Venus before Mars might just be the best way to ensure success when astronauts finally make a run at the Red Planet. In fact, a crewed orbital mission to Venus would arguably make a great dress rehearsal for a much longer and more ambitious human Mars mission.

Successful injection into and out of Venus orbit would also allow NASA to test its SLS (Space Launch System) in a novel planetary environment well in advance of a real Mars mission.

A 2015 internal study by NASA Langley Research Center considered a crewed 440-day Venus mission that would deploy and inflate a habitable high altitude balloon. The idea would be for the crew to spend 30 days in Venus’ atmosphere at an altitude of 50 kilometers from its surface.
Venus as seen by the Pioneer Orbiter.

Credit: NASA

Venus as seen by the Pioneer Orbiter.

By comparison, most round-trip orbital missions to Mars, or even one of its moons, would clock in at 700 Earth days or more.

“Launch opportunities for a direct to Venus mission versus a direct-to-Mars mission are more, with Venus mission windows occurring approximately every 1.5 years and Mars mission windows every two years,” Jeff Matthews, Director of Venture Strategy & Research at The Space Frontier Foundation, told me. He says there are even Mars mission options that involve a Venus flyby before heading on to the Red planet.
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Even so, Venus remains crucial to understanding the evolution of habitable zones around the growing plethora of stars known to harbor extrasolar planets. Lying just inside the inner edge of our solar system’s habitable zone, Venus’ dense atmosphere cloaks a hellish surface. With surface pressures more than 92 times that of Earth; temperatures hot enough to melt most electronics, and no water; it’s hardly the first place one would look to settle.

“As the closest planet to Earth, and the planet most similar to the Earth in size, understanding Venus is of great importance to understanding the solar system and the nature of earthlike planets,” Geoffrey Landis, a physicist at NASA Glenn Research Center, told me. “But it has very much been under-explored in comparison to its smaller cousin, Mars.”

But we are in the process of developing high-temperature materials and electronics that could survive on the surface of Venus, says Landis, who notes that astronauts in Venus orbit could use surface rovers with realtime telerobotics to “virtually” explore the Venusian surface.

Even so, the idea behind the first of such orbital missions would be to combine in situ science observations with a full test of SLS’ technical capabilities in a challenging real life interplanetary environment.
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“With a shorter travel duration,” said Matthews, “I think that there are ample opportunities to mount manned and unmanned missions [to Venus] that would greatly benefit our ability to conduct other deep space operations.”

Here’s a sample roadmap:

* A 2020 uncrewed orbital mission to the Moon using NASA’s SLS.

* A 2023 crewed orbital mission to Venus using Orion and the same SLS architecture.

* A 2027 uncrewed orbital mission to Mars or its moon of phobos using a modified SLS and Orion architecture.

* A 2031 crewed mission to Mars or its moon of phobos using SLS and Orion.

Such a Venus mission would likely need to be a public-private partnership involving NASA and its international partners.

“For private companies such as SpaceX and remote sensing startups, there could be a strong appeal for tech demonstration operations during a deep space mission to Venus,” said Matthews.

Even an unmanned, but human-capable, SpaceX Dragon capsule or NASA Orion capsule on a journey around Venus, says Matthews, would collect valuable data on the challenges posed by cosmic radiation.

A crewed mission to Venus, says Matthews, could easily bridge the gap between a lunar mission and a mission to one of Mars’ moons.

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Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I wonder how much effect on this is the circumstances of the most proximate orbits of Venus and Mars in near future. I know that for the past half year, the unusual condition has been that Mars is closer to Earth than Venus - and in order for something to get accomplished before Trump's first 4 years ends, maybe Venus is the one that would work in the right timeframe.

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