Envision Vensar Venus Observations Performance Predictions

Venus holds the key to understanding rocky planet evolution in our solar system and beyond. As Earth’s "twin" in terms of size, mass and density and sitting within the habitable zone one might expect that the two planets would evolve very similarly. This expectation is quite erroneous with Venus surface and atmospheric conditions being very different than the Earth. To understand how Venus evolved so differently than the Earth ESA and NASA are sending three missions, EnVision, VERITAS and DaVinci to Venus in the 2030s. ESA’s EnVision mission has a synthetic aperture radar, VenSAR, provided by NASA designed to peer beneath the optically opaque atmosphere and provide high resolution imagery and topography of the surface. Here we describe the expected performance of the VenSAR instrument for its various modes of operation.