Henry Spencer wrote:

Nothing much at the moment. It's still very difficult to operate for any
length of time on the surface -- keeping the electronics cold is the
biggest problem -- and that severely drives up the cost of doing anything
there, which makes it an unattractive target.

Note, however, that NASA is, among other concepts, soliciting proposals
for a Venus In-Situ Explorer (VISE) under the recently released
Announcement of Opportunity for the New Frontiers Program 2003 and
Missions of Opportunity.

http://research.hq.nasa.gov/code_s/n...ain.html#2.1.2

I know of at least one VISE-type proposal in preparation and have heard
rumors of another.

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Alex R. Blackwell
University of Hawaii