The Determination of the Rotational State and Interior Structure of Venus with VERITAS
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Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2021-11-02
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Citation of Original Publication
Cascioli, Gael, et al. “The Determination of the Rotational State and Interior Structure of Venus with VERITAS“ The planetary science journal 2, no. 6 (November 02, 2021). https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/ac26c0.
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This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
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Abstract
Understanding the processes that led Venus to its current state and will drive its future evolution is a major
objective of the next generation of orbiters. In this work we analyze the retrieval of the spin vector, the tidal
response, and the moment of inertia of Venus with VERITAS, a NASA Discovery-class mission. By simulating a
systematic joint analysis of Doppler tracking data and tie points provided by the onboard synthetic aperture radar,
we show that VERITAS will provide accuracies (3σ) in the estimates of the tidal Love number k₂ to 4.6 × 10-⁴
, its
tidal phase lag to 0°. 05, and the moment of inertia factor to 9.8 × 10-⁴ (0.3% of the expected value). Applying
these results to recent models of the Venus interior, we show that VERITAS will provide much-improved
constraints on the interior structure of the planet.