Thursday, December 31, 2020 by Matthew Peddie (WMFE)
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NASA astronauts Robert Behnken, left, and Douglas Hurley are seen inside the SpaceX Crew Dragon Endeavour spacecraft onboard the SpaceX GO Navigator recovery ship shortly after having landed in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Pensacola, Florida, Sunday, Aug. 2, 2020. The Demo-2 test flight for NASA s Commercial Crew Program was the first to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station and return them safely to Earth onboard a commercially built and operated spacecraft. Behnken and Hurley returned after spending 64 days in space. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
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There’s more than 1 way to send a spacecraft to Venus
A look at Rocket Lab’s private mission to Earth’s twin, and how NASA decides what planets to visit
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NASA last sent a spacecraft to orbit Earth’s nearest neighbor in 1990.
Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, sent a whole slew of mostly successful missions to Venus, and Japan has an orbiter there now.
The tricky part is sending a robotic mission to the surface. Most have only survived for a few hours. So why send a robot to a planet that will destroy it?
The short answer: It can likely tell us more about our home planet.