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Writer's pictureNathan

NASA to send 2 missions to Venus

After decades of neglect, NASA is launching two missions to explore Venus, the first since 1989. These missions are named DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, and they will launch between 2028 and 2030. Recently, there has been an increase in interest in Venus exploration, Russia, India, and the company Rocket Lab all have plans to launch missions to Venus during the decade.

DAVINCI+ and VERITAS are part of the Discovery program, which develops and manages low-cost interplanetary missions. In 2019, NASA asked universities and NASA centers to develop concepts for future Discovery class missions. In early 2020, they selected four mission concepts for further development. Then just recently, this was down selected to two missions that will actually fly. Together these two missions will help us understand how Venus turned out so differently from Earth.

DAVINCI+ in the Venusian atmosphere
Artist's concept of DAVINCI+, Credit: NASA/GSFC

DAVINCI+

Named after a renowned renaissance scientist, DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging), will focus on studying Venus’s atmosphere. The mission consists of a spherical descent capsule that will launch around 2029. Then, after multiple Venus flybys, DAVINCI+ will plunge into the harsh Venusian atmosphere. It will fall through the sulfuric clouds for about an hour.

There will be 4 scientific instruments inside the descent capsule. These instruments will study the elemental composition and isotopic ratios of the Venusian atmosphere. There will also be a camera that will take the first high-resolution images of the Venusian terrain during the descent. The science results that we get from this mission could shape our understanding of “Earth’s twin”.


VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy)

How do you image the surface of Venus? The thick clouds obscure the surface and there is no way to use cameras, so you have to use radar. In the 1980’s, NASA made a thorough map of the surface of Venus using radar on their Magellan spacecraft. But since then, radar technology has improved significantly.

VERITAS above Venus, Discovery program, 2021
Artist's concept of VERITAS, Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

VERITAS will orbit Venus and use modern radar techniques to make a more detailed 3D map of the Venusian surface. VERITAS will also map the gravitational field of Venus and try to figure out whether there are active volcanoes on Venus. Combining all this scientific data, we can learn lots of new information about geology, topography, and volcanic activity on Venus.


The missions that didn’t make the cut

These two exciting missions to Venus were selected out of 4 proposals which each received funding last year. There were two other missions that didn’t make the cut, but they were such interesting concepts, so I’m going to talk about them.

My favorite concept was Trident, a flyby mission targeted at Neptune and its largest moon, Triton. Neptune has only been visited by one spacecraft, Voyager 2, and that was way back in 1989! Neptune is very difficult to reach, a launch window opens up only every 13 years! Trident would have launched in 2025, and flown by Neptune and Triton in 2038, after flybys of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter. The mission would try to understand why Triton’s surface keeps on resurfacing and search for a possible ocean under the ice of Triton.

The other concept that didn’t get chosen was the Io Volcano Observer (IVO). IVO would have orbited Jupiter in a highly elliptical orbit, and performed multiple close flybys of Jupiter’s moon Io. Io is different from the other Galilean moons because it has a large amount of volcanic activity. By studying Io, IVO could have learned whether Io has a magma ocean, and how tidal forces affect planets. The Io Volcano Observer could have also worked with NASA’s Europa Clipper, and ESA’s JUICE, which will launch to Jupiter in the next few years.



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