Mitigating Power and Memory Constraints on a Venusian Seismometer

Abstract

Abstract The nearest term pathway to the deployment of a seismometer on Venus is an instrument that can operate under ambient surface conditions on battery power. We conduct a series of studies on combined hardware and software approaches to maximize the quality of data returned under the likely restrictions of minimal on-board data storage and only being able to transmit in real time during a small fraction of a multimonth deployment. We assess likely Venus seismicity by examining different terrestrial analog settings; we find that likely Venus analog settings all fall within about an order of magnitude of mean Earth in terms of seismicity level. We use the seismic record from a station in central Alaska as a Venus surrogate for algorithm development. We tested various transmission triggers and developed a simple low-memory algorithm that mimics the common terrestrial long-term average/short-term average trigger. If the seismometer can operate in coordination with an orbiter that can remotely turn off data transmission, then the frequency content of a few seconds of data can be used to distinguish small, nearby earthquakes from large, distal ones, and total data transmission can be tuned to favor the latter. If an orbiter can also turn on transmission for other nearby seismometers, it would further enhance the ability to distinguish small- and large-magnitude earthquakes autonomously and increase the chances of capturing the initial onset of significant events.