NASA and ESA’s Return to Venus

Flyaway

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View: https://youtu.be/EmWQiq-tAy4


Scheduled for 3 Jun 2021
Venus, our planetary neighbor, is a hot, hellish unforgiving world. Its toxic atmosphere and sweltering surface make it a challenging place to study, and it’s been over 3 decades since NASA visited Earth’s evil twin...until now! NASA is sending two bold new missions to study this inferno-like world: DAVINCI+ and VERITAS. Join mission experts Thursday, June 3 at 3:00 p.m. ET on #NASAScience Live and submit your questions for them to answer using #askNASA.

Meet the experts:
Dr. James Garvin is the Principal Investigator for the DAVINCI+ mission. His lifelong passion for Venus began in the Fall of 1979 and he says having the DAVINCI+ mission selected is a dream come true. Dr. Garvin is looking forward to exploring many exciting areas of Venus but says that it will be epic to see the Venus mountains at human scales in 3D with DAVINCI+. When he’s not dreaming about going to Venus, Dr. Garvin loves taking walks with his wife and their dog Glenda and watching ice hockey.

Dr. Susanne Smrekar is the Principal Investigator for the VERITAS mission. She was first hooked on the incredible intrigue of Venus when she was ‘in the room’ with the great minds of geology and geophysics, watching data arrive from the Magellan mission over 30 years ago. It has been her lifelong quest to understand how Earth and Venus have diverged. In her free time, she loves to mountain bike, run, hike and be outside.
 
The Moon is close, Mars is beckoning and glamorous and Venus is... neither. It such a hell hole, it is a PR nightmare; and too often for a cash starved NASA, PR means bucks and bucks bring missions.
 
The Moon is close, Mars is beckoning and glamorous and Venus is... neither. It such a hell hole, it is a PR nightmare; and too often for a cash starved NASA, PR means bucks and bucks bring missions.
Well it’s a good job that science and not public relations is NASA’s primary consideration. You do not choose missions like this just on what you think their PR value is in fact that would probably be about the worse possibly way of picking a mission.
 
Even though I consider Venus a dead world, and even hell, I consider these missions important for its exploration.
 
I have mentioned in another thread that NASA had announced recently that it will send, not one, but two spacecraft to Venus this decade as part of its efforts to ramp up exploration of the closest planet to Earth.
The decision was hailed by scientists who study Venus and have felt neglected by a space agency decidedly more interested in Mars. NASA has not sent a robotic spacecraft to Venus since the launch of the Magellan orbiter in 1989. Launched by space shuttle Atlantis, Magellan made a controlled entry into the Venusian atmosphere in 1994 after collecting reams of data that have tantalized scientists ever since."
 
I have mentioned in another thread that NASA had announced recently that it will send, not one, but two spacecraft to Venus this decade as part of its efforts to ramp up exploration of the closest planet to Earth.
The decision was hailed by scientists who study Venus and have felt neglected by a space agency decidedly more interested in Mars. NASA has not sent a robotic spacecraft to Venus since the launch of the Magellan orbiter in 1989. Launched by space shuttle Atlantis, Magellan made a controlled entry into the Venusian atmosphere in 1994 after collecting reams of data that have tantalized scientists ever since."
I hope this leads to some kind of sky flying explorer or probe since supposedly thats one of the most "hospitable" places on Earth.
unfortunately most people are only fixated on Venus' surface which is hellish
 
A flying orbiter is a rather good option for exploring Venus. Satellites and orbiters can give us a lot of interesting and valuable information if they are equipped with a good payload: cameras, radars, spectrometers, scanners, and other useful sensors. I know that Dragonfly Aerospace is a South-African space endeavor that focuses on producing imagers and cooperating with satellite launchers. Their cameras are compact but powerful at the same time. I won't be surprised if they'll work on one of the missions to Venus soon.
 
Thread title changed in light of this news.

View: https://twitter.com/esascience/status/1402925778354987008


You wait ages for a mission to Venus and then three come along at once.

The European Space Agency has just selected a probe called Envision to go study the second planet from the Sun.
 

U.K. government press release on U.K. involvement in Envision.

 
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I have mentioned in another thread that NASA had announced recently that it will send, not one, but two spacecraft to Venus this decade as part of its efforts to ramp up exploration of the closest planet to Earth.
The decision was hailed by scientists who study Venus and have felt neglected by a space agency decidedly more interested in Mars. NASA has not sent a robotic spacecraft to Venus since the launch of the Magellan orbiter in 1989. Launched by space shuttle Atlantis, Magellan made a controlled entry into the Venusian atmosphere in 1994 after collecting reams of data that have tantalized scientists ever since."
I hope this leads to some kind of sky flying explorer or probe since supposedly thats one of the most "hospitable" places on Earth.
unfortunately most people are only fixated on Venus' surface which is hellish

one's a radar mapping mission (in orbit), the other has a descent probe.
An airborne mission would be separate and probably not a Discovery-class mission (too expensive).
 

U.K. government press release on U.K. involvement in Envision.

This is a bit out of this thread but I`d like to mention another space mission by the UK. I`d like to mention Rosalind Franklin Mars rover mission. This mission will attempt to search for life on Mars. Interesting fact that this is the first Mars rover mission by GB. The launch is about to happen in 2022. https://www.skyrora.com/blog/tag/uk-space-industry
 

U.K. government press release on U.K. involvement in Envision.

This is a bit out of this thread but I`d like to mention another space mission by the UK. I`d like to mention Rosalind Franklin Mars rover mission. This mission will attempt to search for life on Mars. Interesting fact that this is the first Mars rover mission by GB. The launch is about to happen in 2022. https://www.skyrora.com/blog/tag/uk-space-industry
Will any private endeavor participate in the manufacturing of this rover?
 
Oh wow another Mars rover. Maybe it can bring yet another sampler and spectrometer to study even more dust.
 
Even though I consider Venus a dead world, and even hell, I consider these missions important for its exploration.
Yes, you are right. This planet has a really harsh environment. High atmospheric pressure and high temperature make the existence of life on this planet impossible
 
Even though I consider Venus a dead world, and even hell, I consider these missions important for its exploration.
Yes, you are right. This planet has a really harsh environment. High atmospheric pressure and high temperature make the existence of life on this planet impossible

the upper atmosphere is often considered one of the most similar environments to Earth.
There the temperatures and pressures are more Earth like.

a copy and paste from NASA

Potential for Life


Thirty miles up (about 50 kilometers), temperatures range from 86 to 158 Fahrenheit (30 to 70 Celsius), a range that, even at its higher-end, could accommodate Earthly life, such as “extremophile” microbes. And atmospheric pressure at that height is similar to what we find on Earth’s surface.


At the tops of Venus’ clouds, whipped around the planet by winds measured as high as 224 miles (360 kilometers) per hour, we find another transformation. Persistent, dark streaks appear. Scientists are so far unable to explain why these streaks remain stubbornly intact, even amid hurricane-force winds. They also have the odd habit of absorbing ultraviolet radiation.


The most likely explanations focus on fine particles, ice crystals, or even a chemical compound called iron chloride. Although it's much less likely, another possibility considered by scientists who study astrobiology is that these streaks could be made up of microbial life, Venus-style. Astrobiologists note that ring-shaped linkages of sulfur atoms, known to exist in Venus’ atmosphere, could provide microbes with a kind of coating that would protect them from sulfuric acid. These handy chemical cloaks would also absorb potentially damaging ultraviolet light and re-radiate it as visible light.
 
New paper concerning the DAVINCI mission to Venus.

Revealing the Mysteries of Venus: The DAVINCI Mission​

Abstract​

The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission described herein has been selected for flight to Venus as part of the NASA Discovery Program. DAVINCI will be the first mission to Venus to incorporate science-driven flybys and an instrumented descent sphere into a unified architecture. The anticipated scientific outcome will be a new understanding of the atmosphere, surface, and evolutionary path of Venus as a possibly once-habitable planet and analog to hot terrestrial exoplanets. The primary mission design for DAVINCI as selected features a preferred launch in summer/fall 2029, two flybys in 2030, and descent-sphere atmospheric entry by the end of 2031. The in situ atmospheric descent phase subsequently delivers definitive chemical and isotopic composition of the Venus atmosphere during an atmospheric transect above Alpha Regio. These in situ investigations of the atmosphere and near-infrared (NIR) descent imaging of the surface will complement remote flyby observations of the dynamic atmosphere, cloud deck, and surface NIR emissivity. The overall mission yield will be at least 60 Gbits (compressed) new data about the atmosphere and near surface, as well as the first unique characterization of the deep atmosphere environment and chemistry, including trace gases, key stable isotopes, oxygen fugacity, constraints on local rock compositions, and topography of a tessera.

 
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