NASA plans two visits to Earth s nearest neighbour Venus euronews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from euronews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
NASA has announced missions to Earth’s nearest neighbour Venus.
After decades of exploring other planets and moons, the space agency is returning its sights to the solar system’s hottest planet, which it last visited with its Magellan spacecraft in orbit in 1989.
NASA’s new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced the missions during his first major address to employees on Wednesday.
One mission named DaVinci Plus will analyse the thick, cloudy Venusian atmosphere in an attempt to determine whether the inferno planet ever had an ocean and was possibly habitable.
The other, Veritas, will seek a geologic history by mapping the rocky planet s surface.
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image of its shadow during the rotorcraft’s second experimental test flight on April 22, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Picture the scene: A small drone the size of a suitcase descends into a dark Martian crevasse perhaps a lava tube that was formed billions of years ago by volcanic activity on the Red Planet. The drone illuminates its surroundings, recording views never seen before by human eyes as its suite of instruments seeks out signs of past or present alien biology. Finally, its reconnaissance complete, the drone flies back to a landing zone on the surface to transmit invaluable data back to Earth. After soaking up the Martian sunlight to recharge its batteries, it continues its explorations of terrain inaccessible to any other machine.
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image of its shadow during the rotorcraft s second experimental test flight on April 22, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Picture the scene: A small drone the size of a suitcase descends into a dark Martian crevasse perhaps a lava tube that was formed billions of years ago by volcanic activity on the Red Planet. The drone illuminates its surroundings, recording views never seen before by human eyes as its suite of instruments seeks out signs of past or present alien biology. Finally, its reconnaissance complete, the drone flies back to a landing zone on the surface to transmit invaluable data back to Earth. After soaking up the Martian sunlight to recharge its batteries, it continues its explo