The Venus surface temperatures near 460°C and pressures of 93 bar have made long-duration surface missions infeasible. The atmosphere is also caustic and has a dense cloud layer resulting in poor topography mapping, requiring either hazard tolerant landing systems with significant mass penalties, or the exclusion of landing sites with rough terrains due to safe landing concerns at the expense of scientific value.

The Tension Adjustable Network for Deploying Entry Membrane (TANDEM) concept is a lightweight vehicle developed to operate in Venusian extreme environment. TANDEM's unified design is capable of handling all aspects of Entry, Descent, Landing, and Locomotion (EDLL) through an integrated tensegrity and deployable semi-rigid heat shield design. Most proposed EDLL concepts utilize separate systems for each stage, resulting in significant mass penalties due to the need to carry systems not in continual use over the life of their respective missions. The design of TANDEM uses an actively controlled tensegrity frame for entry and descent that are also used for landing and locomotion. This enables TADEM to gather science data during its descent stage as well as on the surface. The truss-like configuration of the frame of TANDEM is a lightweight design that allows for a high payload to structural mass ratio, leading to a significant mass reduction.