NASA Plans Airships, Floating City for Manned Venus Mission

NASA To Explore Venus

The team at NASA have always looked forward in expanding their horizons and have now come up with a project to explore the planet Venus. A research project has been unveiled by NASA’s Space Mission Analysis Branch, proposing to send astronauts to Venus speculating that the `lighter than air’ pods would be hovering above the clouds that would be housing the explorers.NASA has revealed that they intend sending astronauts to explore Venus with inflatable air born habitats and a movie together with an image has been published on a NASA website portraying a conceptual design for inflatable silver blimp type air balloons for the purpose of living and working which would be accommodating the two astronauts for a period of one month in the planet Venus atmosphere.

A statement from NASA’s Space Mission Analysis Branch – SMAB, states that “a recent internal NASA study of a High Altitude Venus Operational Concept – HAVOC, has led to the development of an evolutionary program for the exploration of Venus with focus on the mission architecture and vehicle concept for 30 day crewed mission to Venus’s atmosphere. A lighter than air vehicle can carry either a host of instruments and probes or a habitat and ascent vehicle for a crew of two astronauts to explore Venus for up to a month”.

Atmosphere Relatively Benign

Mission to the planet Venus, according to the American space agency would need less amount of time when compared to a similar manned mission to Mars. It is also considered that the mission would be much simpler since the atmosphere of the planet is relatively benign together with similar gravity, pressure and density to Earth. According to SMAB, the atmosphere of planet Venus seems to be an exciting destination for further scientific study as well as future human exploration and the main technical challenges for the mission would include performing the aero capture manoeuvres at Venus as well as Earth, inflating and inserting airship at Venus together with protecting the solar panels and the structure from the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere.

Need Advanced Technology/Further Refinement

NASA has also stated that there would be a need of being advanced in technology as well as further refinement of the proposed venture before its implementation. Presently, there has not been any successful manned mission to any planet though the moon seems to be the only natural satellite that man has ever set his foot on.

NASA had disclosed earlier this year, that it had managed in creating the first 3D printed object in space together with a machine on the International Space Station and is now a 3D printing tools for use on the station. Several designers have created concepts for extra-terrestrial adventures which include a London firm Priestmangoode, who had designed a capsule which would be floating tourists to the edge of space together with ZA Architects, who intend sending robots to Mars to build caves for the purpose of human habitation. Stay tuned for more interesting updating details coming up for future exploration on the planet Venus.