Rocket Lab’s Upcoming Mission To Venus
While Rocket Lab is working towards multiple ambitious goals for the future, they also are experimenting and using their current resources for unique missions. Venus is a distant planet within our solar system that has also intrigued scientists around the world. Based on recent research and more, Rocket Lab is now set to help a future mission look for life.
Rocket Lab is expected to use Electron and Photon to launch the first private mission to Venus in 2023. In September 2020, scientists at MIT and Cardiff University announced they had observed what may be signs of life in the clouds of our planetary neighbor, Venus. They eventually teamed up with Rocket Lab and are now preparing to launch a probe to around 30 miles altitude.
While small-lift launch vehicles are primarily used for small satellites and low Earth orbit, they are capable of much more. Using Electron’s powers along with Photon, Rocket Lab is capable of reaching much greater distances than what you would normally see. This has caused the company to experiment and attempt a future mission to Venus, Mars, and the Moon. Here I will go more in-depth into the purpose of this mission and Rocket Lab’s involvement.
Rocket Lab’s Involvement
Typically, when choosing a launch provider for distant missions such as reaching a different planet, your options are limited and very expensive. This has to do with the fact that smaller companies will end up picking a large rocket apart of a rideshare mission. This helps reduce the price but removes a lot of the control from the customer. Thanks to Electron and Photon however, a different option is available. Here companies can purchase an entire small-lift launch vehicle for a dedicated mission. This gives them more control over the specific destination, timing, and more. Taking a look at the upcoming mission to Venus, it has been planned for quite a while now. In late 2020, Rocket Lab tweeted saying, “Well hello there Venus. Congrats to the teams behind this exciting research! Rocket Lab is planning a private mission to Venus in 2023, using Electron to launch a Photon satellite to the planet’s atmosphere in the hopes of providing more data in the search for life.”
Specifically, In September 2020, scientists at MIT and Cardiff University announced they had observed what may be signs of life in the clouds of our planetary neighbor, Venus. Their observations indicated the potential presence of phosphine, a gas typically produced by living organisms. In 2023, Rocket Lab is sending the first private mission to Venus to help gather further evidence. The goal, using an Electron launch vehicle and Photon spacecraft, is to send a probe to around 30 miles’ altitude, where Venus’ atmospheric conditions are closer to those found on Earth. Research suggests Venus was once a habitable planet similar to Earth. A 2019 study from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies found that Venus could have had shallow oceans on the surface for two to three billion years and this would have supported temperatures of between 68 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Around 700 million years ago though, a resurfacing event released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, turning Venus into a dangerous, inhospitable planet where atmospheric temperatures reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. While more than 30 Venus missions have been undertaken, Rocket Lab’s will be the first private exploration of the planet. Electron will be responsible for getting both the payload and Photon into low Earth orbit. From here Photon will take care of the remaining journey. Rocket Lab’s Photon small spacecraft is based on the heritage Electron launch vehicle Kick Stage, leveraging numerous components that have significant flight heritage, including the Curie engine, an in-house designed and developed in-space propulsion system. Photon flies as the upper stage of Electron, eliminating the parasitic mass of deployed spacecraft and enabling full utilization of the fairing. Together they allow Rocket Lab to reach unique destinations such as Venus.
Venus Mission
Now that we know Rocket Lab’s involvement, we can take a closer look at the mission itself. Within the Venus Life Finder Mission Study report, they point out that, “We have partnered with Rocket Lab to provide the science payload and science team to go with their 2023 Venus Mission’s rocket, cruise spacecraft, and direct probe entry vehicle.” The Venus direct entry vehicle aboard Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft has room for up to 1 kilogram of science instrumentation for the short-duration (three minute) descent through the cloud layers. They choose to search for organic molecules in the cloud droplets by an instrument called an autofluorescence nephelometer. This will be the first attempt to search for organic molecules in the Venus atmosphere. The instrument can also constrain the composition of the cloud particles, key to letting scientists know if the clouds are more habitable than pure concentrated sulfuric acid. The Venus Life Finder (VLF) Missions are a series of three direct Venus atmosphere probes designed to assess the habitability of the Venusian clouds and to search for signs of life and life itself. The VLF missions are a focused, optimal set of missions that can be launched quickly and with relatively low cost. The mission concepts come out of an 18-month study by an MIT-led worldwide consortium.
The study was partially funded by the Breakthrough Initiatives. The concept of life in the Venus clouds is not new, having been around for over half a century. What is new is the opportunity to search for life or signs of life directly in the Venus atmosphere with scientific instrumentation that is both significantly more technologically advanced, and greatly miniaturized since the last direct in situ probes to Venus’ atmosphere in the 1980s. Venus is a compelling planet to search for signs of life because of the habitable temperatures in the cloud layers and because of many atmospheric chemical anomalies that together are suggestive of unknown chemistry and possibly the presence of life. The VLF series of missions are directly formulated to assess the habitability of Venusian clouds and to search for signs of life and life itself. In this study, they report on a focused set of missions that can be launched quickly and with relatively low cost. While NASA and ESA have recently selected missions to visit Venus at the end of the 2020s (VERITAS, DAVINCI+, and EnVision), these missions are for general studies about the planet’s properties and do not address the habitability questions VLF is aimed for. Here Rocket Lab comes into play for an affordable and time-efficient mission to the distant planet.
Conclusion
Each day Rocket Lab continues to progress towards more and more ambitious ideas. As of right now the company is working towards a new launch vehicle, production and launch sites, missions to the Moon, Mars, and much more. Rocket Lab is staying busy and testing the limits of each piece of equipment. This ambition is helping the company innovate and turn into one of the most influential companies within the space industry. After scientists at MIT and Cardiff University announced they had observed what may be signs of life in the clouds of our planetary neighbor, Venus, a mission was scheduled with Rocket Lab to launch and deliver a probe. We will have to wait and see how the mission goes and the impact it has on the space industry.