The Determination of the Rotational State and Interior Structure of
Venus with VERITAS
Abstract
Understanding the processes that led Venus to its current state and will
drive its future evolution is one of the main challenges of the next
generation of space missions. In this work we analyze the retrieval of
the spin vector, the tidal response and the moment of inertia of Venus
with VERITAS, a Discovery-class mission proposed to NASA. By simulating
the joint analysis of Doppler tracking data and tie points provided by
the onboard synthetic aperture radar, we show that VERITAS would provide
strong constraints on the interior structure of the planet. In
particular we show that VERITAS would provide accuracies in the
estimates of the tidal Love number k2 to 3.9×10-4, its
tidal phase lag to 0.04o, and the moment of inertia
factor to 1.4×10-3 (0.4% of the expected value).