| From the Zoom meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1u-jlf_Olo A caller asked Professor Sara Seager about sending a probe with a balloon, and she likes that idea, and said that was what the Vega program previously did: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program >The Vega program (Cyrillic: ВеГа) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union (who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle) and Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus and also flyby Halley's Comet. A Russian caller mentioned a proposed Russian space mission to Venus called Venera-D: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venera-D >Venera-D (Russian: Венера-Д, pronounced [vʲɪˈnʲɛrə ˈdɛ]) is a proposed Russian space mission to Venus that would include an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2026 or 2031. The orbiter's prime objective is to perform observations with the use of a radar. The lander, based on the Venera design, would be capable of operating for a long duration (≈3 h) on the planet's surface. The "D" in Venera-D stands for "dolgozhivushaya," which means "long lasting" in Russian. |