Nanaimo Astronaut Patrick Michael Sullivan Pioneering Space Trials of Venus Rover

Working from his Mt. Benson Street home in Nanaimo, astronaut Patrick Michael Sullivan is pioneering space trials of a new vehicle that will land on Venus and collect data for NASA.

Sullivan said this is similar to the Mars lander, that was part of the NASA Mars Surveyor '98 program, which consisted of two spacecraft launched separately, the Mars Climate Orbiter (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) and the Mars Polar Lander (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Lander). Mars Polar Lander also conveyed the Deep Space 2 surface-penetrator mission to Mars. The two missions were designed to study the Martian weather, climate, water and carbon dioxide levels, in order to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-term and episodic climate changes. Communication with the lander was lost prior to atmospheric entry.