NASA Selects 2 New Missions to Venus
Both missions will help us understand how Venus became an inferno-like world. By Matthew Humphries
(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
NASA s Discovery Program offers scientists and engineers a chance to design their own planetary science missions and potentially have them funded by the space agency. Two such missions have just been selected, and they both involve a trip to the hottest planet in our solar system: Venus.
The characteristics of Venus suggest that it may have been the first habitable world in the solar system at one point in the distant past, but then it became an inferno. We d all like to know why, and NASA is awarding approximately $500 million in development funding to two projects that may help answer that question. They are called DAVINCI+ and VERITAS.
NASA is ready for two new missions to Venus, which is very much similar to Earth, in an effort to determine how the planet became inhospitable mybigplunge.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mybigplunge.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
VERITAS and DAVINCI+ chosen and funded as part of agency s concept selection
Laura Dobberstein Thu 3 Jun 2021 // 13:40 UTC Share
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NASA announced yesterday that it will fund two new missions to Venus to study its atmosphere and topography, both chosen from the Discovery Program.
The two missions will seek to understand how Venus made the transition from a theoretically Earth-like climate to becoming the solar system’s hottest planet. Venus is often referred to as Earth s sister planet and shares a similar size, mass, position, and composition. It may provide hints toward Earth s far distant future.
The missions are the land-bound Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI+) and the orbiting Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy (VERITAS). Both were given a $500m budget and are slated for launch between 2028 and 2030.