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"Our low-cost mission to Venus is a perfect example of what is now possible," French told. The company is seeing increased interest from both the government and private sector for deep-space Photon missions, including to regions around the moon, he added. Rocket Lab's recent launch of NASA's CAPSTONE mission to the moon using Electron and Photon "was a powerful demonstration of our spacecraft's capabilities," he added.įrench said that Rocket Lab is already applying lessons learned on CAPSTONE to improve the two Photons that will help get NASA's ESCAPADE mission to Mars. "Photon is unlocking a broad range of new missions near Earth and in deep space," French told. reached out to Richard French, Rocket Lab's director of space systems business development and strategy, for the latest. (Image credit: NASA/Ames Research Center) Powerful demonstration The science phase of Rocket Lab's planned Venus mission targets the cloud layer between 28 and 37 miles (45 to 60 kilometers) in altitude, enabling roughly 330 seconds of detailed observations. Many organic molecules, such as the amino acid tryptophan, have fluorescent properties. That instrument will shine a laser out of the probe's window onto cloud particles, causing any complex molecules within them to light up, or fluoresce. The probe will hunt for carbon-containing organic molecules - the building blocks of life as we know it - in the clouds using a low-mass, low-cost autofluorescing nephelometer. The craft will be able to spend about five minutes in the Venus clouds at an altitude of 30 miles to 37 miles (48 to 60 kilometers), where temperatures are relatively Earth-like. The probe can accommodate a single, roughly 2-pound (1 kilogram) instrument, according to the paper.
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The plan is to launch a small atmospheric probe toward Venus in May 2023, with a backup window available in January 2025. Team members lay out the architecture for this private mission in a newly released paper (opens in new tab) in the journal Aerospace. For example, California-based company Rocket Lab is working to send a probe to Venus soon using its Electron booster and Photon spacecraft bus. Not all of the coming Venus missions will be mounted by NASA or other national space agencies.
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