Sener joins ESA’s EnVision mission to study Venus’ formation

The industrial engineering and technology group Sener will take part in the European Space Agency’s (ESA) EnVision mission, working from its facilities in Spain and Poland.

EnVision will be the first mission to deliver a complete view of Venus, from its inner core to its upper atmosphere, to understand how and why Venus and Earth evolved so differently. The mission will study the planet’s atmosphere, surface, and interior, and how these layers interact. This is ESA’s second mission to Venus. The launch is scheduled for November 2031. The journey will include a 15-month cruise followed by 11 months of aerobraking to reach the final science orbit. The science operations phase will last for four Earth years.

Sener is responsible for the design and development of the power supplies of the VenSpec instrument, as well as a 16-meter-long dipole antenna formed by two booms for the Subsurface Radar Sounder (SRS), developed by Thales Alenia. The SRS is a nadir-looking radar sounder that transmits low-frequency radio waves with the unique ability to penetrate beneath the surface. These waves interact with subsurface structures and dielectric discontinuities, producing reflections that are used to create images (radargrams) and map hidden geological features. The instrument’s design relies on physical and electromagnetic modeling of surface and subsurface targets.

Venus exhibits unusual geological formations such as pancake domes, complex ridged terrain (tesserae), and exceptionally long lava channels, identified by previous missions. Understanding how these features formed will provide key insights into the planet’s geodynamic evolution. The SRS will help characterize vertical structures and properties of these formations, detect buried craters and strata, and define boundaries between geological units.

The boom developed by Sener will be critical for the SRS to achieve its objectives and ensure mission success. Sener brings extensive experience in this field, having designed, manufactured, verified, and integrated the magnetometer boom for ESA’s JUICE mission, launched in 2023 to study Jupiter and its icy moons.

The satellite includes the VenSpec instrument, which is a set of three image spectrometers: VenSpec-M (infrared image generator), VenSpec-H (infrared spectrometer), VenSpec-U (ultraviolet spectrometer). Sener develops, in collaboration with the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, the Central Control Unit Power Supplies Units (CCU-PSU) of the instrument that communicates with the satellite and the power supplies of the H and U channels, with strict requirements for ripple, noise and voltage precision in the outputs.