‘Decade of Venus’ declared as three missions could ‘prove’ planet was once habitable

A MAP of Venus’ surface is coming to a lifetime near you.

While Elon Musk calls for manned missions to Mars and privately funded space travel makes regular headlines, Venus has gone underrepresented in space exploration discourse. 

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Nasa announced two missions to our planetary neighbor blasting off in the late half of this decade. 

ESA, the European space agency, will pilot one mission to Venus in 2032. 

Humans have not sent a probe to Venus since the Soviet Union carried out two missions in 1985.

According to Space.com, the 2020s will be “the decade of Venus”.

Venus is actually much closer to Earth than Mars is–roughly 23million miles closer. 

Venus is comparable in size to Earth but the conditions of its atmosphere and surface are much more violent than Mars.

The surface of Venus is hotter than the surface of Mercury, despite being further from the Sun. 

“These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface,” Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson said in reference to the two American-led missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI+. 

VERITAS’s objectives were outlined in a report which writes the mission seeks to “1) understand Venus’ geologic evolution, 2) determine what geologic processes are currently operating, and 3) find evidence for past or present water.”

Venus has more than 1,600 volcanoes. If it is discovered that any are active, researchers have hope that water underneath the surface is driving that volcanic activity. 

“Water, though not stable on the surface, is likely still shaping interior dynamics, driving volcanic outgassing, and influencing surface and atmospheric chemistries,” the report writes.

While VERITAS is focused on geology and mapping, DAVINCI+ will explore the content and origins of the Venusian atmosphere.

The DAVINCI+ mission will be equipped with four cameras to analyze the behavior of Venusian clouds. 

In 2020, traces of phosphine gas were observed in Venus’s clouds.

Phosphine gas is a signature of some bacterias and could be a sign of life on the planet.

DAVINCI+ will conclude its mission by descending to the Alpha Regio, where it will scan the terrain for evidence of an ancient ocean and/or disabled tectonic plates. 

The European-led EnVision mission will observe more than 20% of Venus. 

Cratering on Venus’s surface indicates the surface is comparatively young–less than 800 million years old. 

The EnVision site writes that mapping these craters will give scientists an opportunity to assemble Venus’s chronology and determine when planet diverged from potentially habitable to lethal wasteland.

All three missions to Venus have some overlap and will comprehensively alter the human understanding of our neighboring planet. 

The information gleaned from the missions will leave scientists better equipped to forecast whether distant Earth-sized planets are “more likely to resemble Earth, or Venus.”

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk