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Solar panels can work when it's overcast. Of course they may not work in that kind of heat. Seems 10% of falling sunlight reaches the surface of Venus, or 20% o
by sevenless 10y ago
Solar panels can work when it's overcast. Of course they may not work in that kind of heat. Seems 10% of falling sunlight reaches the surface of Venus, or 20% of Earth's, which is 5 times more than the Juno probe gets.
- curtis 10y agoSolar is even more practical if your lander can bounce back and forth between the surface and high altitude. Instead of a rover type design, you could make a lander that's kind of halfway between a submersible and an airship. The lander would descend to the surface, hang out for a while doing sciency stuff, then when the coolant starts to run low it would ascend to high altitude, use solar panels to rebuild the coolant supply (you could just use nitrogen from the atmoshpere), and then it could descend again.