Musk, a successful businessman and entrepreneur who
was born in South Africa, is the founder of SpaceX.
At the age of 30, Musk amassed his first fortune by selling two successful businesses: Zip2,
which he sold for $307 million in 1999, and PayPal, which eBay purchased for $1.5 billion
in 2002.
Musk decided to launch a privately funded space company as his next major venture.
Initially, Musk proposed sending a greenhouse to Mars, dubbed the Mars Oasis.
His goal was to pique the public's interest in space exploration while also establishing
a science base on Mars.
But the cost was too high, so Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX,
in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne, California.
Apart from Mars, Musk has recently turned his attention to Venus, and one of his probes
discovered something unusual about the scorching planet.
What did Musk recently reveal about his probe's findings in a new message?
Stay tuned until the end to learn more about this recent revelation.
Venus, named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty, is currently the attention of
many scientists and researchers.
The planet Venus was named after the brightest of the five planets known to ancient astronomers.
In fact, it was previously known as Aphrodite by the ancient Greeks.
At the time, Venus was thought to be the morning to evening star, the one that first showed
at sunset and sunrise.
These stars were previously known as Vesper and Lucifer, but that changed with the new
technological instruments developed by scientists.
Venus is slightly smaller than Earth, although it resembles it in other aspects.
Because of its dense clouds, the surface of Venus cannot be seen clearly.
Venus has been in the spotlight before.
From the 1960s to the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union targeted the planet frequently with
its Venera and Vega programs, setting a number of exploration milestones along the way (despite
a number of launch failures).
In October 1967, for example, Venera 4 became the first probe to send data back from another
planet's atmosphere, discovering that Venus' surface is incredibly hot, and its air is
surprisingly thick.
Venera 7 made the first successful soft landing on a planet other than Earth three years later.
In 1982, the Venera 13 lander became the first to record audio on the surface of another
planet (a feat recently replicated on Mars by NASA's Perseverance rover).
In the mid-1980s, the Vega 1 and Vega 2 missions successfully deployed balloon probes in Venus's
thick atmosphere, marking yet another off-Earth first.
During this period, the United States also conducted some Venus missions, though not
nearly as many as its Cold War rival.
In 1962, 1967, and 1974, NASA's Mariner 2, Mariner 5, and Mariner 10 spacecraft flew
by the planet.
In 1978, the agency launched the Pioneer Venus Orbiter as well as the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe.
In December of that year, the multiprobe launched four instrument-laden entry craft into Venus'
atmosphere, and the orbiter studied Venus from above until 1992.
Then there was Magellan, the first interplanetary mission launched from a space shuttle.
The probe used synthetic-aperture radar to map Venus in great detail until October 1994,
when its operators sent it down to its death in the Venusian atmosphere.
After that, the list becomes quite short.
From 2006 to 2014, Europe's Venus Express orbiter studied the planet, with a focus on
its atmosphere.
And Japan's Akatsuki orbiter has been conducting its own atmospheric investigations since arriving
at Venus in December 2015, after some tenacious troubleshooting.
Venus faded as an exploration target for a number of reasons.
The Soviet Union's decline and eventual collapse in the early 1990s, for example, had a chilling
effect; Vega 2 remains the last successful fully homegrown interplanetary mission launched
by the Soviet Union or its successor state, Russia.
Furthermore, throughout the 1990s and beyond, NASA increasingly focused its robotic exploration
efforts on Mars, whose surface bears undeniable signs of past water activity and is far more
inviting to landers and rovers.
Even the most successful Venus's landings have only lasted a few hours on the planet's
surface, which is hot enough to melt lead.
But Venus is finally getting some love.
NASA has announced two missions to Earth's hellishly hot sister planet by 2030: an orbiter
called VERITAS and an atmospheric probe called DAVINCI+.
The pair will end the space agency's long drought on Venus, which hasn't launched a
dedicated mission to the second rock from the sun since the Magellan radar-mapping orbiter
in 1989.
Venus is being pursued by other organizations as well.
For example, European, Indian, and Russian space agencies are all developing Venus's
mission concepts for possible launch in the next decade or so.
But Musk and the California-based company Rocket Lab are ahead of everyone, aiming to
send a life-hunting mission to the planet in the coming months after one of SpaceX's
probes detected something unusual on the planet.
A new analysis of infrared measurements obtained by the probe in orbit reveals the possibility
of active volcanoes on the planet.
As Elon Musk SpaceX and the team continued their mission, these assumptions about the
planet's volcanoes proved to be correct.
Venus has the most volcanoes in the solar system, according to studies and observations
of the Venusian atmosphere.
There are many more unidentified volcanoes among the world's 1600 significant volcanoes.
Volcanic deposits that are around 200 million years old cover a large portion of the world,
and volcanic activity has played an important role in the planet's history.
For a variety of reasons, scientists are still debating whether there are still active volcanoes
on the planet, but due to the planet's thick atmosphere, scientists have had to rely on
NASA's Magellan spacecraft's radar.
In order to learn more about the volcanic deposit, Russian scientists devised a novel
methodology that may aid in unravelling the mysteries of Venus' volcanic activity.
The method combines geologic maps of cooled lava flows from previous eruptions with Magellan
Mission radar data.
It is based on measurements of radar emissivity, which measure how the planet's surface interacts
with and emits microwave radiation.
Several sections of Venus's surface have revealed various types of emittances that correspond
to various rock characteristics, revealing information about their formation.
A new study also suggests that radar emissivity can be used to determine the degree of chemical
weathering experienced by lava flows after they erupt and come into contact with Venus's
atmosphere.
Because such weathering can take weeks or months, emissivity may be useful in identifying
new lava flows.
Researchers compared three Venusian volcanoes: Maat Mons, Ozza Mons, and Sapas Mons, using
radar admittance measurements and geologic mapping.
Based on these findings, it appears that Maat Mons and a few of the planet's lava flows
are not as old as previously thought.
Moving forward, the same approach could be applied to new Magellan data to further investigate
Venus's volcanoes.
Future Venus missions, such as the ESA Vision mission and NASA's Venus Emissivity Radio
Science InSAR Topography and Spectroscopy Mission, which will provide higher resolution
radar emissivity observations, may also require the methodology.
Elon Musk, on the other hand, directed additional research.
This methodology was used by scientists and researchers to investigate a Venusian volcanic
peak about 2.5 kilometers high and 200 kilometers wide.
It can be found in a region of southern Venus known for its abundance of highland volcanoes.
According to the research findings, there has been recent activity from the volcano.
Previous research has found that the planet has fewer craters from cosmic impacts than
one might expect based on the number of craters found on other rocky planets in the solar
system.
According to the findings of the Soviet Union probe, lava from these active volcanoes may
play a role in keeping Venus's surface clean.
A better understanding of Venus's volcanic activity may shed more light on the recent
discovery of phosphine gas on the planet, which some experts have strangely speculated
may be linked to life on the hellish planet.
The presence of phosphine in Venus's atmosphere could be linked to a recent or ongoing volcanic
event on the planet.
As a result, locating areas on Venus that may contain potentially active volcanic material
is critical.
A privately funded mission to study Venus's atmosphere is been established as a result
of the discovery of phosphine gas.
The mission's goal, which is being funded by Elon Musk, is to determine whether or not
the planet contains phosphine and whether or not it can support life.
Despite the fact that this was a privately funded mission, Musk was not the sole decision-maker.
The effort is also being led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The initiative is funded by the Breakthrough Foundation, in collaboration with the Elon
Musk Foundation and SpaceX, with Jewish American scientist Sarah Seager serving as principal
investigator.
The Venus Life Finder Missions would consist of a series of experiments based on a probe
sent to Venus to determine whether or not the planet supports life.
A team of scientists led by Seager discovered phosphine gas in Venus's atmosphere, which
sparked the idea.
This type of gas is not life because it is simply a gas, but phosphine is produced by
anaerobic bacteria that live in low-oxygen environments.
This discovery thrilled some because it proved that life, albeit bacterial life, existed
on another planet.
But how is this possible, given the planet's scorching heat and generally unfavorable conditions?
The surface of Venus, it is well known, does not support life, but the cloud layer fifty
kilometers above the surface does.
It is similar to Earth's lower atmosphere and could theoretically support microbial
life.
Rechecking the data has led some scientists to believe that the theory was misunderstood
and that the molecules could be sulfur dioxide, a gas abundant in the Venusian Clouds.
Scientists, on the other hand, have NASA's upcoming missions to look forward to.
NASA's Discovery program, which develops low-cost exploration projects, ended up choosing VERITAS
and DAVINCI+.
Each mission is expected to launch between 2028 and 2030, with a price tag of around
$500 million.
VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) will
use radar to map Venus' surface in detail from orbit and monitor infrared surface emissions,
revealing how rock type varies from place to place.
Such observations will shed light on Venus' geologic history and climate evolution, as
well as aid researchers in determining whether the planet still has active plate tectonics
and volcanism.
DAVINCI+, which stands for "Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry
and Imaging" will send a "descent sphere" through Venus' dense atmosphere.
The probe will measure the composition of the atmosphere as it falls, providing scientists
with information about how the planet became hothouse.
If all goes well, the two NASA missions will follow on the heels of a privately funded
Venus's mission.
Let us know what you think about these Venus missions in the comments section below.