LONDON: “VAMP” an inflatable, propeller powered aircraft by Northrop Grumman could explore skies around Venus
Northrop Grumman, a US based aerospace and defense firm, aims to develop a concept aircraft that can cruise through the skies around Venus on a multi year mission.
With its unique inflatable and propeller powered aircraft that would be built from light weight materials Northrop Grumman prepares itself to enter NASA’s fourth New Frontiers planetary science competition which is open to international teams across the globe.
Way back in the year 2002, NASA started its New Frontiers program. This program basically includes a series of space exploration missions that is funded by NASA with the main aim of researching several Solar planets that includes Jupiter, Pluto, Venus to name a few. The program concentrates on funding the medium sized missions known as Discovery class, which cannot be completed within a certain cost and time constraints.
With this program NASA encourages the scientists across the globe to participate in the competition and submit their mission proposals for the project. This year’s mission seems to be involved around exploration of Venus.
Currently, two New Frontiers missions that are already being carried out are New Horizons, launched in 2006, it explores the dwarf planet Pluto while Juno spacecraft was launched in 2011 is on a mission of exploring Jupiter. OSIRIS-REx will probably commence its mission to explore and collect samples from asteroid somewhere in 2016.
