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After decades of exploring other worlds, NASA is returning to the hottest Venus, our nearest but perhaps most overlooked neighbor.
The new director of the space agency, Bill Nelson, announced two new robotic missions to the hottest planets in the solar system in his first important speech to employees on Wednesday.
“Both sister missions are aimed at understanding how Venus became a hellish world capable of melting lead on the surface,” Nelson said.
A mission called DaVinci Plus will analyze the thick, cloudy atmosphere of Venus to determine whether the planet has ever had an ocean and may be habitable. A small spacecraft will pass through the atmosphere to measure gas.
This will be the first Venus atmospheric mission led by the United States since 1978.
Another mission called Veritas will search for geological history by mapping the surfaces of rocky planets.
“Amazing” amount of learning
NASA scientist Tom Wagner said in a statement: “It’s shocking that we don’t know much about Venus,” but the new mission will provide a new perspective on the atmosphere of Venus, which is mainly composed of carbon dioxide. To the core.
“It’s as if we rediscovered this planet.”
NASA’s top scientific officer Thomas Zurbuchen called it “the new decade of Venus.”
Each mission—launched sometime between 2028 and 2030—will receive $500 million for the development of NASA’s exploration program.
These missions defeated two other proposed projects, namely Jupiter’s moon Io and Neptune’s ice moon Triton.
The United States and the former Soviet Union launched multiple spacecraft to Venus in the early days of space exploration. NASA’s Mariner 2 successfully flew for the first time in 1962, and the Soviet Union’s Venus 7 successfully landed for the first time in 1970.
In 1989, NASA used the space shuttle to send its Magellan spacecraft into orbit around Venus.
The European Space Agency placed a spacecraft around Venus in 2006.
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