Preliminary Design of PRIMAVERA: Preliminary Investigation Mission to Achieve Venusian Reconnaissance in Atmosphere

PRIMAVERA, or the Preliminary Investigation Mission to Achieve Venusian Reconnaissance in Atmosphere, isa Phase 0/A study for a spacecraft developed by thirty students during the week-long 2024 Concurrent EngineeringWorkshop (CEW) hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Transinne, Belgium. The mission objective was todevelop a spacecraft to deliver a floating platform payload into the Venusian atmosphere where it would take in situmeasurements in order to study the Venusian clouds. PRIMAVERA would be launched on an Ariane 64, and a gradualHohmann transfer was planned to take the single-thruster spacecraft to its final circular, equatorial Venusian orbit at5000km. There, thepayloadconsisting of a gondola with instrumentation attached to a helium variable-altitude balloonwould descend to its operational altitude between 50 and 65 km. An iterative approach was taken towards systemsdesign while following concurrent engineering principles. Students from ESA member states, Canada, and Slovakiawere divided into teams of two to four members for each of the following subsystems: structures, configuration, thermal,power, communications and data handling, attitude and orbital control systems, propulsion, trajectory analysis, groundsegment, and cost engineering. Subsystems were worked on simultaneously and parameters were tracked using ESA’sConcurrent Model-based Engineering Tool (COMET software). This paper details the results of the preliminary designof PRIMAVERA.