Lifting Gas - Balloons On Other Celestial Bodies

Balloons On Other Celestial Bodies

A balloon can only have buoyancy if there is a medium that has a higher average density than the balloon itself.

  • Balloons cannot work on the Moon because it has almost no atmosphere.
  • Mars has a very thin atmosphere – the pressure is only 1/160th of earth atmospheric pressure – so a huge balloon would be needed even for a tiny lifting effect. Overcoming the weight of such a balloon would be difficult, but several proposals to explore Mars with balloons have been made.
  • On Venus, the density of the CO2 atmosphere at the surface is 65 kg/m3, fifty times that of Earth, and gravity is comparable to that on the Earth's surface. A small balloon could lift substantial weights. In 1985, the Soviet Vega program sent two balloons to float in Venus' atmosphere at 54 km altitude. Because CO2 is so dense, ordinary (Earth) air would be a lifting gas on Venus. This has led to proposals for a human habitat that would float in the atmosphere of Venus at an altitude where both the pressure and the temperature are earthlike.
  • Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has a dense atmosphere of mostly nitrogen that is appropriate for ballooning. There are currently plans for exploring Titan using balloons.

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