Conceptual Design of Solar Powered Airplanes for Venus Atmospheric Exploration

Kurzfassung

The recent missions to Venus were not able to answer the current scientific questions in the areas of atmosphere, geology and extra-terrestrial life research. A new type of mission could enable measurements from the Venusian atmosphere, which were never taken before. An airplane mission in an extra-terrestrial environment could mark a new era of robotic space exploration, but no research was done in the lastdecade in this field. Hence, a new look on the current research questions and an extensive feasibility analysis are needed. A tool for an automatic analysis of several airplane configurations is developed in this thesis and unique at its function.