Paul Byrne, associate professor of Planetary Science at North Carolina State University, explains the importance of the three upcoming missions to our planetary neighbour.
The next Venus missions will tell us about worlds that live in other places
As our exoplanet continues to accumulate discoveries (and we’ve seen it More than 11,000 exoplanets so far) we need to know if an Earth-sized planet looks like Earth or looks like Venus. “We don’t know which of these results is expected or likely,” says Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University. And to know that we need to understand Venus much better.
Most scientists would agree that all living exoplanets would need water.
With surface temperatures of 471 ° C and 89 times worse than Earth’s, it seems impossible for water to be on Venus. But Venus and Earth are the same size, the same age, and we think it is best that they are made of comparable materials and were born with very similar initial conditions. Venus is 30% closer to the sun than the Earth, which is very noticeable, but not absolute. And yet, after 4.5 billion years, these two planets have become very diffe
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The DAVINCI+ probe falls toward Venus, sampling the atmosphere as it goes, in an artist’s concept. NASA GSFC; CI LABS/MICHAEL LENTZ AND OTHERS
Was Venus once a good home for life? NASA missions aim to find out
Jun. 9, 2021 , 3:35 PM
When NASA announced last week it would spend $1 billion developing two new missions to Venus the agency’s first visits in decades to Earth’s hothouse twin planetary scientists were elated, and not just because a long wait had ended. A dramatic shift in thinking about the planet over the past few years has made a visit even more enticing. Venus was once thought to have boiled off all its water almost as soon as it was born 4.5 billion years ago, turning into the parched, hostile world of today. But many scientists now think Venus might have kept expansive oceans for billions of years a nearly perfect setting for life.
Two new missions to Venus DAVINCI+ and VERITAS have been selected by NASA. These missions will shed light on how Venus became the inhospitable world it is today, despite the fact that it shares many characteristics with Earth.
Rediscovering Venus --NASA s New Missions to Discover if Venus was the First Habitable Planet in the Solar System dailygalaxy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from dailygalaxy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.