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NASA Wants to Know Why Venus Is so Inhospitable, Sends Two Missions Worth $500M

Lord knows we’re all in need of another habitable planet at the pace things are going, which also explains our ever-growing interest in Mars. Venus could’ve been another great place to call home since it’s so close to us and shares so many common characteristics with Earth, but we all know it’s not being very neighborly.  And NASA is trying to figure out why that is, with two new missions meant to shed some light on the planet’s infernal conditions.
Venus 1 photo
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Venus is the nearest planet to us and has an Earth-like climate and an ocean. But it is still a very inhospitable place and scientists are curious why. NASA recently approved two new missions to Venus and is prepared to fund each with $500 million.

The first mission is DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging), and its purpose is to study the composition of Venus’ atmosphere, to get a better understanding of how it formed. It will also send us high-resolution pictures of the planet’s tesserae, which are like the continents on our planet.

Veritas (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) is the second mission aimed to study Venus. Its purpose is to map the planet’s surface creating 3D reconstructions of topography and understand where it all went wrong and why Venus has developed so differently compared to Earth. This second mission will also give us more information on the planet’s rock type, according to NASA.

The spacecraft for both Veritas and DAVINCI+ will be designed and built by Lockheed Martin, a Maryland-based manufacturer.

The missions were submitted back in 2019 but have only been chosen now. They are both expected to launch sometime between 2028-2030 if all goes according to plan.

However, a team of scientists in the UK revealed that future space missions could be seriously affected by extreme space weather if they take place beyond the next five years, more precisely between 2026 and 2030.
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About the author: Cristina Mircea
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Cristina’s always found writing more comfortable to do than speaking, which is why she chose print over broadcast media in college. When she’s not typing, she also loves riding non-motorized two-wheelers, going on hikes with her dog, and rocking her electric guitars.
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