NASA announced on Wednesday (2) two new exploration missions to Venus, the hottest planet in the solar system, in an attempt to better understand why it became a hellish place when its neighbor Earth became habitable.
These two missions, called Davinci + and Veritas, are expected to depart “in the period 2028-2030,” the US Space Agency reported. “They will allow the scientific community to study a planet we haven’t visited in over 30 years,” NASA’s new administrator, Bill Nelson, said during the annual speech to agency officials.
“There’s Mercury, the planet closest to the Sun, which has no atmosphere. Then there’s Venus, with an incredibly dense atmosphere. And there’s Earth, with a habitable atmosphere,” he listed. “We hope these missions will help us better understand how the Earth evolved and why it is currently habitable, while others (planets) are not.”
Davinci+ will have to measure the composition of Venus’ atmosphere and determine if it ever had an ocean. “The mission consists of a sphere that will plunge into the planet’s thick atmosphere, making precise measurements of noble gases and other elements,” explained NASA.
Veritas, in turn, will study the geological history of the planet, placing itself in orbit around it. The mission “will track reliefs on almost the entire surface of the planet to create a 3D reconstruction of the topography and confirm whether processes such as tectonics or volcanism are still taking place there,” NASA said. Veritas will also need to determine whether active volcanoes are releasing water vapor into the atmosphere.
Bill Nelson also confirmed that Artemis 1, the first mission of the US moon return program, will be launched “later this year”.
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