Photo: NASA / JPL-CALTECH / Courtesy
The US space agency, NASA, announced two new missions to our closest neighbor in the solar system, Venus.
The main objective is to understand how this planet was transformed into a “hellish world” despite having other characteristics similar to Earth.
Scientists believe that Venus may have had an ocean and a climate similar to Earth in the past.
The two missions were selected in the framework of the ninth round of competitions of the NASA Discovery program, which in 2019 launched a new call for proposals and since 1992 has driven the development of more than 20 missions and instruments.
Both missions to Venus will receive initial funding of $ 500 m illions of dollars each for its development and will be released between 2028 Y 2028 .
It is “an opportunity to investigate a planet that we have not visited in more than 30 years, “NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said Wednesday, announcing the missions during his first” State of NASA “speech since taking office in May. this year.
The last US probe to reach Venus was Magellan, which orbited the planet in 1990. Other probes from Europe and Japan have orbited the planet since then.
“These two missions aim to understand how Venus was transformed into a world that is like hell, with a temperature in its surface that can melt lead “, noted Nelson.
Venus is the planet hottest of our s system s olar , even though it is the second in distance from the Sun, after Mercury. The surface temperature of Venus is close to 549 degrees centigrade.
In what the missions will consist of
One of the missions is named D avinci + , acronym in English for Investigation of the Deep Atmosphere of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging of Venus.
Davinci + will perform measurements on the planet’s atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved, and will try to elucidate whether Venus had an ocean in the past.
The mission is also expected to send the first high-resolution images of geological formations known as “tesserae”. Scientists believe that these formations would have similarities to the terrestrial continents , and would indicate that Venus also had plate tectonics.
James Garvin of the Goddard Center for Space Flight in Greenbelt, Maryland, is the mission’s principal investigator.
The second mission is V eritas , acronym in English for Emissivity, Radio Science , InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy of Venus.
Veritas will map the planet’s surface to understand its geological history and why it evolved so differently from Earth.
The mission will use radar to map elevations on the surface and find out if Venus still has active earthquakes and volcanoes .
Suzanne Smrekar of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, California, is the Principal Investigator for Veritas.
Some instruments will be provided by the German Aerospace Center, the Italian Space Agency and the French National Center for Space Studies.
“Deep goals”
“It is surprising how little we know about Venus. But the combined results of these missions will inform us about the planet from its clouds in the sky and its volcanoes on the surface to the very core of the planet, “said Tom Wagner of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Associate Administrator for Science, said: “We will use state-of-the-art technology developed by NASA and refined in many years of technology missions and programs. We are kicking off a new decade of Venus to understand how an Earth-like planet was transformed into a hothouse “.
” Our goals are profound. It is not just about understanding the evolution of the planets in our own solar system and their habitability, but about going further to the study of exoplanets, an emerging and exciting area of NASA research. ”
Paul Rincon, a journalist with the BBC science unit, pointed out that while in recent decades missions to Mars have dominated NASA’s budget, recently “that is changing. ”
“ For a long time some thought that Venus was a ‘dead’ planet, but now many scientists believe that it could have geological activity ”He added.
“And it could have hosted oceans for over a billion years in the past. There is even a region in the planet’s dense atmosphere in which microbial life could have persisted, floating in the clouds. ”
“For scientists who have dedicated their careers to studying Venus, the announcement of the new missions is a cause for joy” .
Ten facts about Venus
- Has a size similar to terrestrial and has been called Earth’s “twin planet”, but these twins are nothing alike.
- Its atmosphere is thick and toxic , loaded with carbon dioxide and perpetually covered by clouds yellowish mainly from sulfuric acid that trap heat, intensifying a greenhouse effect.
- It is the hottest planet in the system solar, although Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is located at 108 million km from the Sun.
- The surface temperature is close to 500 degrees Celsius, enough to melt lead.
- A day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days .
- The planet rotates in the opposite direction , so on Venus the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east (according to our cardinal point system).
- It has no moons or rings .
- The pressure is 90 times that you sit in the surface of the Earth , and is similar to what you would experience at a depth of 1.5 km in a terrestrial ocean.
- It was the first planet to be explored by a probe , Mariner 2 of the NASA, at 1962.
- The former Soviet Union was the only country to successfully land a probe on the surface of Venus (Venera 7, in 1970). The probe survived for a very short time due to hostile conditions.
Source: NASA
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