Feasibility study for Venus atmosphere mission Original Research Article

A Venus orbiter mission is going to be proposed as one of the future Japanese planetary missions. The primary objective is to reveal the mechanism of the atmospheric general circulation. The mission will reveal also ionospheric circulation, atmospheric escape processes and geologic activities. The spacecraft will be launched in February–April of 2007 by a M-V rocket of ISAS and arrive at Venus in September of 2009. The spacecraft will be inserted into an elliptical equatorial orbit with a period of 21.3 hours. The outline of the mission is presented in this paper.