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Determination of Venus' interior structure with EnVision
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  • Pascal Rosenblatt,
  • Caroline Dumoulin,
  • Jean-Charles Marty,
  • Antonio Genova
Pascal Rosenblatt
Laboratory of Planetology and Geodynamics

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Caroline Dumoulin
Université de Nantes
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Jean-Charles Marty
Groupe de Recherche de Geodesie Spatiale (GRGS)
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Antonio Genova
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Abstract

The Venusian geological features are poorly gravity-resolved and the state of the core is not well constrained, preventing to understand Venus’ cooling history. The EnVision candidate mission to the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme consists of a low-altitude orbiter to investigate geological and atmospheric processes. The gravity experiment aboard this mission aims to determine Venus’ geophysical parameters to fully characterize its internal structure. By analyzing the radio-tracking data that will be acquired through daily operations over six Venusian days (four Earth’s years), we will derive a highly-accurate gravity field (spatial resolution better than ~170 km), allowing to detect lateral variations of the lithosphere and crust properties beneath most of the geological features. The expected 0.3% error on the Love number k2, 0.1° error on the tidal phase lag and 1.4% error on the moment of inertia are fundamental to constrain the core size and state as well as the mantle viscosity.
21 Apr 2021Published in Remote Sensing volume 13 issue 9 on pages 1624. 10.3390/rs13091624