If there is one planet that scientists want to undress with their eyes, it’s Venus, and NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has seen through its hazy atmosphere to take the first visible light images of the planet that was named for the ancient Greco-Roman goddess of love.
NASA picked two new robotic missions to explore the hot world of Venus, Earth’s neighbor and the second planet from the Sun, administrator Bill Nelson announced on Wednesday.
May 9, 2021
New measurements from Parker Solar Probe – the first new direct measurements of Venus’ atmosphere in nearly 30 years – showed an unexpected natural radio signal being emitted by Venus’ ionosphere. The probe made the discovery while using Venus as a “gravity slingshot” to come closer to the sun.
??
Venus has been in the news a lot since last September, when researchers announced the possible detection of phosphine, a possible life sign, in its atmosphere. On May 3, 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe announced another discovery: a never-before-seen natural low-frequency radio signal in the atmosphere of Venus. The probe, designed primarily to study the sun, came close to Venus to use it as a gravity slingshot, needed to propel the probe sunward. Parker Solar Probe was at its closest to Venus yet – only about 500 miles (800 km) above Venus’ surface on July 11, 2020 – when it found the surprising signal.
April 24, 2021
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, currently studying the sun, has observed the entire dust ring that encircles the sun along Venus’ orbit. It is the first complete view of this dust band from any spacecraft.
This isn’t some sort of flare – or glare – or any kind of jet or ray. It’s the first complete view of a ring of dust moving around the sun in the orbit of the planet Venus. The 4 frames of the image were first captured on August 25, 2019. Image via NASA/ Johns Hopkins APL/ Naval Research Laboratory/ Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher.
Did you know that Venus has a ring? Well, sort of. Not a ring of icy or dusty “moonlets” or grains like those surrounding the gas and ice giants in our solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Instead, it’s a circumsolar ring of dust, that is, a ring of dust moving around the sun along Venus’ orbit. Now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has sent back the first complete view of this ring, the space agency rep