NASA's new missions to Venus | Awareness in Space | GS Paper 3
NASA has announced 2 new missions to Venus.
These 2 sister missions aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world, capable of melting lead at the surface.
These include:
Davinci+:
- The Davinci+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging) mission will:
- Measure the planet’s atmosphere to gain insight into how it formed and evolved.
- Determine whether Venus ever had an ocean.
- Return the 1st high-resolution images of the planet’s “tesserae” geological features (These features could be comparable to continents on Earth).
Veritas (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, and Spectroscopy):
- This mission will map the planet’s surface to understand its geological history and investigate how it developed so differently than Earth.
- It will use a form of radar to chart surface elevations and discover whether volcanoes and earthquakes are still happening.
About Venus:
- Venus is the second planet from the sun and the hottest planet in the solar system with a surface temperature of 500C – high enough to melt lead.
- The planet’s thick atmosphere has cranked the surface pressure up to 90 bars.
- Venus is one of 2 planets that rotate from east to west. Only Venus and Uranus have this “backward” rotation.
Historic missions to Venus:
- Magellan – a Nasa mission that ended in 1994.
- Venus Express– A European mission- focused on atmospheric science.
- Akatsuki– Japanese spacecraft- focused on atmospheric science.
- Future missions:
European Space Agency is evaluating a Venus mission, called EnVision, alongside 2 astronomy proposals – Theseus and Spica. Other concepts are also being proposed to NASA.
