In this weekend, Venus is going to shine
bright as a diamond in the night sky,
and you can kick off summer enjoying
some dazzling views of our sister planet.
It's fascinating Venus is is because
in some ways it's so similar to Earth
in terms of its size and its terrain.
And then in other ways,
it is unlike anything we could even imagine.
Well, we're going to learn more about it
with NASA's upcoming Davinci mission.
And here to tell us more about that is
Lindsay Hayes, a NASA program scientist,
joining us this morning.
Lindsay, good morning.
How are you today?
I'm well, good morning to you too,
and thank you for being here.
First of all, I was actually surprised
to find out that even though I've
looked at Venus in the night sky,
just how bright it is compared to other
planetary objects and other stars too.
What is making this weekend specifically
so good for looking at Venus watching it?
Well, Venus is going to be the highest in
the sky that it normally is this weekend.
And so when you when you're out after sunset,
if you look in the western sky, when you,
you know just right after sunset in
the dusk and the dusk time period,
if you look up in the sky right
where the sun has gone down,
the brightest object you'll see
in the sky is actually Venus.
And so as you mentioned,
our sister planet and actually the the next
thing you'll see there too is, is Mars.
So there's opportunity for some
great planet viewing this weekend.
And while you were talking,
we have a little graphic up that correctly
says Mercury is closer to the sun,
but Venus is the hottest planet
in the solar system. Why is that?
Well, Venus is the hottest planet
in the solar system because Venus
has a really thick atmosphere.
It's got about 20 miles of thick
clouds that are survived that extend
above the surface about 20 miles up.
And this means that on the
surface of the planet, right?
Sort of right.
When you get down to the bottom
of that that atmosphere,
it's about 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
Which is about the temperature of a a
professional wood wood fired pizza oven.
And then also the pressure there is
is 90 times Earth's surface pressure.
So very hot, very high pressure.
These are sulfuric acid clouds,
so very aesthetic.
Not a great place to be
sulfuric acid cloud.
I always love it when I hear that
that sounds like something a science
fiction writer would come up with.
Now I can understand why people
are curious to explore Mars.
There's at least.
This idea that maybe it could be
somewhat hospitable to human life?
Not even close to that with Venus.
So what are we looking for the
da Vinci mission to tell us?
Why are we looking more into Venus?
Yeah, the da Vinci mission is really
exciting because it's the first time
this century that we're actually going to
send a probe through Venus's atmosphere
and go all the way down to the surface.
And as we go down, we're going to be
making measurements of the atmosphere.
We're going to be taking little
sips as we go.
We're going to be making measurements of
temperature and pressure and other things,
wind speed, all of that kind of stuff.
And this, we hope will tell
us things like how this,
how this really thick atmosphere developed,
how it evolved over time,
whether or not there were oceans
on on Venus in the past.
And it's going to make.
Fantastic images.
Once it gets down below that cloud layer,
it's going to be one of the first
missions that we've ever had to take
high resolution images of some of
these Highlands that are on Venus,
these sort of oldest surface
places on the planet.
Yeah,
with that thick layer of clouds I believe
is just contributing to a sort of a
greenhouse gas global warming cycle.
Want a rye? Does that mean we thought at
one point that those clouds weren't there,
and that there were lakes and water and
something a little more akin to what we
see on Earth at any point in Venus's past?
Yeah, we think potentially
early in Venus's history,
early in the history of our solar system,
when all of the planets were young,
that potentially Earth and
Venus looked a lot alike, right,
That they may have been oceans, they may
have both had oceans at the same time.
But then there was something that,
you know, something for,
for whatever reason,
Earth and Venus went on sort of
different evolutionary paths.
They sort of their paths diverged and
they evolved in different kinds of ways.
And this may have to do with
the relative sizes.
Venus is a little bit smaller than Earth,
not a lot, but a little bit smaller.
Venus is of course as you
mentioned closer to the Sun,
so that the different amount
of insulation that it gets may
have led to some of that.
But.
But that's why we're doing these
missions right,
is to learn more about that evolution
and to see what has changed overtime.
Really cool, really cool to see
how you're going to be able to
deploy any technology that can
withstand 90 times Earth's pressure.
But that's why you guys are a
lot smarter than we will ever be.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Just to give us a little glimpse
into what's going to be a
really exciting mission.
It was a real pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a great day.