NASA finally returned to Venus. On June 2, 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency had chosen two winners from the recent class spacecraft competition, and both headed to the second planet from the Sun.
I am a planetary scientist and a venus evangelist who is recognized, and this is why I am very happy that humanity will return to Venus.
This was the first time since Magellan’s mission in 1989 that NASA had committed to sending spacecraft to study the veiled planet right next door. With the data of the two Venus missions – called Veritas and Davinci + – will collect, Planetary scientists can start handling one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system: why Venus, a planet with almost the same size, density and age of the earth, is very different from the world Humans call home?
A wrong earth?
Venus is a rocky planet about the same size as the earth, but despite this equation, it is a brutal place. Even though it’s only a little closer to the sun than the earth, the escape greenhouse effect means that it is very hot on the surface – around 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), approximately the temperature of the independent cleansing oven. The pressure on the surface is the destruction of 90 times the pressure at sea level on earth. And to add it, there are sulfuric acid clouds that cover all planets that damage something that passes.
But maybe the most interesting aspect of Venus is that it might never look like the earth. The recent climate model shows that in the past the planet can have a sea of liquid water and a mild climate. It may be worth inhabited for 3 billion years before giving up on a kind of climate disaster that triggers a greenhouse that runs away. The purpose of the two new missions to Venus is to try to determine whether Venus really is the twin of the earth, why he changes and whether, in general, the big rocky planet becomes an oasis that can be inhabited like the earth … or a scorch desert like Venus.
Fresh eyes in Venus
Venus image taken by Akatsuki Ultraviolent Imager. Photo: Archive Dart + Meli Thev / Wikimedia Commons, CC By-Sa 4.0
NASA finally returned to Venus. On June 2, 2021, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency had chosen two winners from the recent class spacecraft competition, and both headed to the second planet from the Sun.
I am a planetary scientist and a venus evangelist who is recognized, and this is why I am very happy that humanity will return to Venus.
This was the first time since Magellan’s mission in 1989 that NASA had committed to sending spacecraft to study the veiled planet right next door. With the data of the two Venus missions – called Veritas and Davinci + – will collect, Planetary scientists can start handling one of the biggest mysteries in the solar system: why Venus, a planet with almost the same size, density and age of the earth, is very different from the world Humans call home?
A wrong earth?
Venus is a rocky planet about the same size as the earth, but despite this equation, it is a brutal place. Even though it’s only a little closer to the sun than the earth, the escape greenhouse effect means that it is very hot on the surface – around 870 degrees Fahrenheit (465 degrees Celsius), approximately the temperature of the independent cleansing oven. The pressure on the surface is the destruction of 90 times the pressure at sea level on earth. And to add it, there are sulfuric acid clouds that cover all planets that damage something that passes.
But maybe the most interesting aspect of Venus is that it might never look like the earth. The recent climate model shows that in the past the planet can have a sea of liquid water and a mild climate. It may be worth inhabited for 3 billion years before giving up on a kind of climate disaster that triggers a greenhouse that runs away. The purpose of the two new missions to Venus is to try to determine whether Venus really is the twin of the earth, why he changes and whether, in general, the big rocky planet becomes an oasis that can be inhabited like the earth … or a scorch desert like Venus.
Fresh eyes in Venus
What might be surprising was that in the 1960s and 1970s Venus was the main focus of space exploration like Mars at this time. Union A.S. And the Soviets sent more than 30 spacecraft in total to the second planet from the sun. But since 1989, only two missions have gone to Venus, and both are focused on studying the atmosphere – Venus Express European Space Agency and Akatsuki Japan.
Conversely, the verity and davinci + mission will take a holistic view by exploring the history of geology and cimatological venus as a whole, in two very different ways but complements each other.
The global coating of sulfuric acid clouds that cover venus makes it almost impossible to see the surface with a normal camera. That is why verity of orbiters – shortens of “venus emissivity, radio science, insar, topography, and spectroscopy” – will bring a strong radar system. This radar can peek through the clouds and collect images and topographic data to 10 times higher resolution than the previous mission to Venus. This will enable scientists to look for clues about the previous Venus climate which can be conserved in rock formations on the surface and may also answer whether the planet is geologically active at this time. And, finally, this interesting mission will use a special infrared camera to peek through the atmosphere at a very specific wavelength to take the first global measurement of what Venus rock is made of – something known by very few scientists.
