A US aerospace company wants to build an inflatable propeller plane capable of flying through Venus's atmosphere in 2021. The plane will travel through the sulfurous skies of Venus for years. The mission is intended for sampling the acidic alien atmosphere directly and gain insight into the Venus surface from 50 kilometres up.

However, the plane may face constraints in its development due to problems emerging in $1 billion funding from NASA. The funding is very much required to get the plane off the ground.

The concept, called the Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform (VAMP), would have a wingspan of 55 metres and the top speed it would travel at is estimated to be220km/h. It is very difficult for a plane to stay any longer than four hours on the surface of Venus since the ground temperature there is around 460 degrees Celsius and ambient surface pressure is about 90 Earth atmospheres.

Constantine Tsang, a researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, said VAMP would be built keeping these factors in mind so that it flies in a more forgiving environment. It will be instructed to fly 50 to 70km above the surface of Venus, a region where the pressure is comparable to that on earth. The temperature in that region is also about 15 degrees Celsius.

A spacecraft would carry the plane to Venus. After arriving in orbit around the planet, separation would happen to allow the plane enter the atmosphere by itself.

VAMP is an inflatable, propeller powered aircraft by Northrop Grumman. Other missions that are also competing for NASA’s 1 billion funding award include exploring moon’s south pole, exploring atmosphere of Saturn etc.

Ron Polidan, chief architect of civil systems at Northrop Grumman, said, “I think we can be ready”.