ARES Mars Aircraft could explore the atmosphere of Venus

ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey) was a low cost scout mission to Mars proposed by NASA's Langley Research Centre. ARES would have used a six and three quarter meter aircraft to study the landscape and atmosphere of Mars from the air, a much more flexible and mobile platform than any ground based lander like Curiosity. Unfortunately in the competition for the 2013 launch slot NASA chose MAVEN and ARES became just another mission that never got off the ground. A half size prototype of the plane drop tested from a balloon at an altitude of more than kilometers worked well and there is no reason to suppose that the plane wouldn't have done its job on Mars. Perhaps the main problem was power, the mission could have lasted for little over an hour compared with the years of NASA's ground based landers, which probably didn't seem like a good return for all the effort of getting the plane to Mars. Transfer the idea to Venus and things would be very different. With plentiful solar power the plane could fly for weeks or months and revolutionise our understanding of Venus's atmosphere. Of course the instruments would be different, but the basic idea remains a good one and I would like to think it might be possible to find a way for this innovative mission to get a second chance on Venus some time in the not too distant future.