After being ghosted by NASA for about 30 years, Venus is back in the limelight.
In June of 2021, NASA announced two bold new missions that will be launched by the end of the decade,
DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.
Although the planet was a focus for early exploration, temperatures that melt lead and clouds of sulfuric acid
earned Venus a reputation of being “hard to work with”.
Between 1970 and 1985, a number of landers reached Venus’ surface,
but none lasted more than about two hours.
So that’s why NASA pivoted to Mars, where its Viking 1 lander touched down successfully in 1976.
These early discoveries made Mars the “go-to” spot for future missions and landers.
Fast forward to 2020 and scientists announced the discovery of phosphine on Venus, a potential sign of life.
That turned everything around.
Although the findings were heavily controversial, it reignited interest in the forgotten planet.
In fact, in June 2021, scientists working with old orbiter data spotted something on Venus that kinda looks like plate tectonics.
All the more reason to go figure out what's going on.
To find out how a world so similar to ours became an inferno, NASA will go to hell...literally.
The two missions, DAVINCI+ and VERITAS also have scientists re-examining two major theories about Venus’ origin.
In the first theory, when the planet was less than a billion years old, it was cooked by a warming sun,
boiling off any existing water. The water vapor, plus the carbon dioxide from a magma ocean,
quickly caused a runaway greenhouse effect, and the hope of a habitable paradise went up in flames.
In the second theory, there were two habitable Earth-like planets in the early solar system.
Venus still ends up with the runaway greenhouse effect,
but not before it enjoyed oceans like Earth’s for over 3 billion years.
Then, massive volcanic eruptions dumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, choking the climate.
Temperatures went up, the oceans evaporated, and a once temperate planet became hostile.
One of these theories is more accurate, but without more data, we don’t know which.
But DAVINCI+ and VERITAS can help answer this and other questions.
DAVINCI+ is short for the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus.
The tandem spacecraft and probe will do two flybys where it will image Venus from above.
On its third flyby, it will release a descent probe.
On its hour-long journey down to the surface it will sample the chemistry in the atmosphere,
including noble gases like xenon, argon, and helium. Since noble gases don’t react with other elements,
they can tell us whether the planet once had an ocean and how much of it ended up in the atmosphere.
The probe will also measure temperature, pressure, and wind speed.
It will descend over Alpha Regio, a complex pattern of valleys and ridges known as a “tessera”.
We don’t really know what tesserae are, but the probe will snap extremely detailed images of them so we can see if they’re related to volcanic activity.
Then there’s VERITAS, which is short for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy.
The orbiter will have a radar that can peek through the clouds and map out the surface of the planet in high resolution.
It will also be equipped with a near-infrared spectrometer to determine the makeup of the surface.
These images will replace the relatively low-resolution ones taken by the Magellan orbiter when it visited the planet in the ‘90s.
VERITAS will also take measurements of Venus’s gravitational field, revealing the interior structure of the planet.
Not only can these missions to Venus tell us more about its origins, but also they can help improve our understanding of exoplanets.
To date, NASA has confirmed more than 4000 planets orbiting stars outside our Solar System.
Some are located in the habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface.
If we learn what caused Venus to go apocalyptic, it may help us identify which exoplanets could be habitable
and create a roadmap for future exploration.
If the return to Venus has you wondering how well you know your neighbor, check out this video on Why Scientists Are Exploring Earth’s Dangerous Twin.
If you have any space breakthroughs you think we should cover, let us know in the comments below
and as always, thanks for watching Seeker.