NASA has announced two new missions to study Venus for the first time in more than 30 years.
The last time NASA visited Venus was by way of its Voyager 2 probe spacecraft in 1989, which passed by Venus and its multiple moons, according to a report by the New York Times. NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, announced yesterday that these two upcoming missions will be performed by robotic spacecraft DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.
These missions are expected to occur later in this decade, according to Nelson, although an exact launch date is not yet known.
“These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface,” Nelson said during his State of NASA address on Wednesday.
Venus, which is often referred to as Earth’s twin, according to NYT, had some point of divergence in similarity in their history.
Earth became the hospitable-for-life planet we know and love today while Venus became a massive, 900-degrees Fahrenheit inferno ball of a planet with an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide. Venus has made its way back into the spotlight as of late in part due to further signs of life being discovered on the planet, signs of life that date back as far as 1978.
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What these signs of life mean is up for debate, but regardless of this point of contention in the alien life study community, NASA feels “it’s time to prioritize Venus,” according to NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine last September, as noted by NYT.
“DAVINCI+ could conclusively confirm the presence of phosphine,” NYT writes in its report. “Tentatively scheduled for launch in 2029, the spacecraft would make scientific observations during two flybys in 2030.”
DAVINCI+, which stands for Deep Atmosphere of Venus Investigations of Nobel Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, will flyby the planet a third time in 2031 and it’s expected to drop a probe of instruments down to the planet meant to analyze gases for about an hour as it drops through the planet’s atmosphere.
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This analysis could determine how Venus formed as a planet, how its atmosphere was created, whether or not water ever left the planet to go into space, and whether or not oceans ever existed on Venus, according to the NYT report. It will also provide further information about the phosphine molecules present on Venus and whether or not these molecules are actually signs of life as some scientists say or the result of non-biological reactions.
The other spacecraft, VERITAS, which stands for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography & Spectroscopy, will launch a year before DAVINCI+. According to NYT, VERITAS is a “much-improved version of NASA’s last spacecraft dedicated to exploring Venus, Magellan, which arrived in 1990 and spent four years mapping the planet’s surface with radar.”
The new mission will do the same except its topographic measurements will be “100 times better than what Magellan produced, stitched together into a highly detailed three-dimensional map,” NYT writes.
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This analyzation will help map out the floors of Venus, which are dark for unknown reasons — scientists say it could be sand, the result of volcanic lava flows, or something else. Studying the rocks on the planet will help scientists gather up an idea of what the planet’s surface is made of as well.
“We hope these missions will further our understanding of how Earth evolved and why it’s currently habitable when others in our solar system are not,” Nelson said.
It’s important to note that these missions are happening by way of an American organization, NASA. Other countries are currently working on their own Venus-related missions as well. The NYT states that a private company called Rocket Lab wants to send a probe to the planet and India and Russia are thinking about Venus missions as well.
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The European Space Agency launched its Venus Express, which orbited the planet for eight years, and in 2005 Japan’s own space agency launched Akatsuki to Venus as well. Akatsuki is the only spacecraft currently at Venus, according to the NYT report.
All of this is to say that Venus hasn’t necessarily been ignored in the space science community — it’s just been ignored by NASA, for the most part, but DAVINCI+ and VERITAS are looking to change that.
For more about the planet, check out this story about possible signs of life recently detected on Venus that go back as far as four decades ago, and then read this story about scientists who have translated radio signals from Venus’ atmosphere into sound.
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Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer, guide maker, and science guru for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes.