Russia Plans To Explore Venus Without NASA

Russia plans to send the Venera-D exploration mission to Venus without NASA participation, albeit with less ambitious scientific goals.

The mission concept was being studied beginning in the mid-2010s by Russia’s IKI Space Research and the NASA Glenn Research Center, but that international partnership was suspended after Moscow invaded Ukraine more than a year ago.

“We now plan to replace the [proposed] U.S. equipment [on the future spacecraft] with domestic ones,” IKI academic advisor Lev Zelenyi said during a press conferenceearlier this month.

The Russian side now is evaluating technologies needed for the mission, which is expected to be launched in 2029 atop an Angara heavy rocket from Russia’s Vostochny Spaceport. “We will have a Russian spacecraft with a good set of sensors,” Zelenyi said.

The Venera-D will be Russia’s first mission to Venus since the Soviet era, when the country made 10 soft landings on the planet. The spacecraft will consist of an orbital module and a lander. The latter will explore Venus’ atmosphere during descent and its surface after the touchdown.

The “D” in the mission name stands for the Russian word Dolgozhivuschaya, which means “long-lived.”

The U.S. and Russia initially planned to extend research operations in the harsh Venus environment beyond the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 missions. Those landers, which were launched in the 1980s, could not function for more than 2 hr. in  temperatures of about 500C and surface pressures equivalent to those of 100 Earth atmospheres.

The U.S. exit from the mission means the withdrawal of high-temperature electronics that could have helped to extend operations, according to Russian space expert Vitaly Yegorov.  NASA Glenn was developing sensors for the Long-Lived In-Situ Solar System Explorer (LISSE)—a small and lightweight (about 20 cm and 22 lb.) station that was supposed to be positioned on the lander and could have functioned on Venus for 90 days or longer. Now, Russia’s Venera-D mission will replicate the Soviet missions, Yegorov said.

The Russian designers did not set out to prolong the lander’s operations through additional insulation as it would add weight or reduce the scientific payload, Zelenyi said. ”The lander will function for 2-3 hr. The most important [function] is to send all the data to Earth,” he said. The orbiter will serve as a relay station.

Zelenyi also confirmed that Roscosmos and the European Space Agency (ESA) have agreed to return scientific equipment from the ExoMars mission, which was canceled in 2022. Russia is expected to get back the Kazachok lander from Turin, Italy, where it had undergone preflight checks, as well as Russian-made sensors from the Rosalind Franklin rover. However, this equipment has no scientific value now and can be used only for exhibitions, he acknowledged. Roscosmos reported at the end of March that the ESA rejected its proposals to reschedule the ExoMars mission for a launch window in 2024 or 2026.