WASHINGTON — The head of a delayed NASA mission to Venus has warned that the project risks losing critical expertise if the agency doesn’t find a way to move up the mission.
NASA selected the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, or VERITAS, mission in 2021 as one of two Discovery-class missions to Venus, at the time planned for launch in the late 2020s. VERITAS would go into orbit around Mars and study the planet using several instruments, including a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imager.
However, the agency decided a year ago to delay the mission by three years, to no earlier than 2031, citing the findings of an review into delays of another NASA mission, Psyche, that found institutional problems at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The delay, NASA said, would address a “workforce imbalance” at JPL, which is the lead center for VERITAS, and free up funding needed to accommodate the Psyche delay.
At a meeting last week of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group, or VEXAG, the principal investigator for VERITAS argued that many of the issues that prompted the delay have been resolved. “Those issues are essentially behind us,” said Sue Smrekar of JPL, citing the launch in October of Psyche and progress on two other major JPL-led missions, Europa Clipper and the NISAR Earth science spacecraft, both on schedule for launches in 2024.
She said an extended delay, as still planned by NASA, threatened the personnel available for VERITAS, particular for its SAR instrument being developed at JPL. “There’s insufficient radar work at JPL. The radar workforce is really at threat,” she said. “It’s a really big technical threat for us.”
She noted that while NASA has provided some funding for VERITAS to maintain its science team, there was “zero support for engineering development” for the mission. That has led some engineering staff assigned to the mission to seek other work at JPL.
“We are…
Read the full article here