NASA plans missions to Venus for first time in decades
Photo taken by the Japanese satellite Hinode showing the passage of Venus in front of the Sun.
REUTERS / JAXA / Handout
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
There are things going on in the sky right now.
Thomas Pesquet aboard the international space station, of course, China, which is in the process of assembling its own, which has landed a machine on Mars which has come to join those of NASA.
The American space agency wants even more: it has announced its intention to return to see Venus, a planet close to Earth, but yet very little studied.
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Venus is a bit like Earth's little sister that would have gone wrong.
Similar in size to our planet, at the right distance from the Sun, she had on paper what it takes for life to appear.
And yet, Venus is today a real hell: a permanent layer of clouds generates a terrible greenhouse effect.
It is on average more than 450 degrees on its surface, surface swept by rains of sulfuric acid.
Why these two totally opposite destinies?
Thirty years after the Magellan probe, the last to Venus, this is what NASA wants to understand, with not one but two missions that will take off by the end of the decade.
Understanding the future of Earth
The first DaVinci + will dive into the clouds to determine what they're made of;
the second, Veritas, will remain in orbit to accurately map the planet.
The two machines will be complementary and their data will have to inform us about the history of Venus.
Has it always been so hellish, or has it had oceans on its surface in the past as we suspect?
What cataclysms have brought it to this current state?
The mysteries are many and some of the answers could tell us more about the future of the Earth.
In today's #StateOfNASA address, we announced two new @NASASolarSystem missions to study the planet Venus, which we haven't visited in over 30 years!
DAVINCI + will analyze Venus 'atmosphere, and VERITAS will map Venus' surface.
pic.twitter.com/yC5Etbpgb8
- NASA (@NASA) June 2, 2021
► To read also:
What will be the mission of Thomas Pesquet on board the ISS?
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