An architecture program for the robotic exploration of Venus
To date, most space exploration has focused on the solar system beyond Earth's orbit while the inner solar system between Earth and the Sun has received only limited attention. In this region, Venus, with a similar size and mass to Earth but with a very different environment, is probably the most interesting body. The most notable feature of Venus is the extreme runaway greenhouse effect. This phenomenon is considered a potential fate for the Earth in the future. Exploring Venus could help mitigate this threat. However, the environment of Venus is sufficiently challenging as to preclude the possibility of physical human presence for the foreseeable future. Consequently, robot-mediated exploration is required
Reassessing the possibility of life on venus: proposal for an astrobiology mission.
With their similar size, chemical composition, and distance from the Sun, Venus and Earth may have shared a similar early history. Though surface conditions on Venus are now too extreme for life as we know it, it likely had abundant water and favorable conditions for life when the Sun was fainter early in the Solar System. Given the persistence of life under stabilizing selection in static environments, it is possible that life could exist in restricted environmental niches, where it may have retreated after conditions on the surface became untenable. High-pressure subsurface habitats with water in the supercritical liquid state could be a potential refugium, as could be the zone of dense cloud cover where thermoacidophilic life might have retreated. Technology based on the Stardust Mission to collect comet particles could readily be adapted for a pass through the appropriate cloud layer for sample collection and return to Earth.
Numerical Simulation for Natural State of Two-Phase Liquid Dominated Geothermal Reservoir with Steam Cap Underlying Brine Reservoir
Hydrothermal reservoir which liquid-dominated hydrothermal reservoir is a type of geothermal reservoir that most widely used for power plant. The exploitation of mass and heat from the geothermal fluid will decrease the pressure in the reservoir over time. Therefore the pressure drop in the reservoir will have an impact on the formation of boiling zones or boiling will increase. The impacts are an increase in the fraction of steam, dryness, in the reservoir and with good vertical permeability will form a steam cap underlying the brine reservoir. The two- phase liquid dominated reservoir is sensitive to the porosity and difficult to assign average properties of the entire reservoir when there is boiling zone in some area of the reservoir. These paper showed successful development of two-phase liquid dominated geothermal reservoir and discussed the formation of steam cap above brine reservoir through numerical simulation for state natural conditions. The natural state modeling in steam cap shows a match with the conceptual model of the vapor-dominated developed. These paper also proofed the presence of transition zone, boiling zone, between steam cap and brine reservoir.