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Rocket Lab plans launch of Venus mission as soon as late 2024
Jeff Foust
October 30, 2023
WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab expects to launch a highly anticipated privately funded mission to Venus as soon as the end of 2024, leveraging its experience from a mission to the moon.
Speaking at a meeting of the Venus Exploration Analysis Group, or VEXAG, Oct. 30, Christophe Mandy, lead system engineer for Rocket Lab’s interplanetary missions, said the company has set a launch date of as soon as Dec. 30, 2024, for the launch of the Rocket Lab Mission to Venus.
https://spacenews.com/rocket-lab-plans- … s-mission/
This is great news since it shows privately financed science space missions can now be mounted. If you run the numbers expensive missions such as Mars Sample Return done by commercial space can be done for 1/100th the cost of the NASA financed approach: instead of costing ~$10 billion, it can be done for only ~$100 million as a privately financed mission. Then at prices this low, it can be fully financed by advertising alone:
Low cost commercial Mars Sample Return.
http://exoscientist.blogspot.com/2023/0 … eturn.html
Robert Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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Hakuto-R Mission 1 was also a Private Japanese mission operated by ispace, it carried some government supported Emirates Arabic Rover and was launched on a Private Space-X Falcon but the mission failed.
I believe the next Moon 'Rover' will be made in Japan in 2024 and the mission fully private.
That Private Spaceflight Dear Moon project is less science and more of a tourism mission and art project financed by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa
Mars One was a private Dutch organization that went bankrupt.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/11/mars-one-is-dead/
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-11-02 10:56:12)
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