Venus airship, illustration

Venus airship. Illustration showing the deployment of a manned airship into the Venusian atmosphere. This is a stage of NASA's High Altitude Venus Operational Concept (HAVOC), a plan to send astronauts to Venus's atmosphere. It is not practical to send crew to the surface as it is one of the hottest place in the Solar System at over 450 degrees Celsius. This airship module would orbit the planet at a height of 300 kilometres (km) awaiting the arrival of the crew. With the crew on board it would descend to an altitude of 80 km at which point it would deploy its parachute. It would then jettison its protective aeroshell before starting to inflate the airship at roughly 70 km altitude. At 60 km the parachute would be jettisoned and the airship would reach its orbiting altitude of 50 km.