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Venus is very variable. Its surface constantly changes from volcanic activity, and the difference between its lower and upper atmosphere is night and day, with a dramatic change in sulfuric acid concentration. So, designing a system that works for all parts of Venus is particularly challenging. NASA thinks they might be on to a new idea of how to do so and has funded Ben Hockman, a roboticist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to work on a tethered atmospheric sensor attached to a balloon as part of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts Phase I program.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n The project, known as the Tethered Observatory for Balloon-based Imaging and Atmospheric Sampling (TOBIAS\u2014assumedly not after the Arrested Development character), is based on a simple principle. On Venus, a very distinct cloud layer, between 47 and 52 km in altitude, separates the relatively stable upper atmosphere similar to Earth\u2019s, with a hellish surface that no probes have yet lasted longer than a few minutes on.\u00a0<\/p>\n TOBIAS would float a helium-filled balloon in the upper atmosphere, where conditions are Earth-like. Then it would release a \u201ctowbody\u201d \u2013 a stand-alone sensing platform connected to the balloon by a tether. That tether is intended to be several kilometers long, allowing the towbody to pass through the hazardous cloud layer and, hopefully, take accurate, high-resolution images of Venus\u2019 surface.<\/p>\n \n