NASA plans two new missions to Venus, the first in decades Space

DAVINCI +, consisting of a flying spaceship and an atmospheric drop probe, will return the first high-resolution images known as Venus’ “tessera”.

NASA announced on Wednesday that it will launch 20 new scientific missions to Venus between 2028 and 2030 – the first in decades – to study the atmosphere and geological features of its sister planet Earth.

The U.S. space agency said it would provide about $ 500 million to develop each of these two missions, under the name DAVINCI + (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) and VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, acronym). InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy).

DAVINCI + will measure the composition of Venus’s dense atmosphere in an attempt to improve its understanding of how it evolved, and VERITAS will map the planet’s surface from orbit to help determine its geological history and develop it differently than Earth, NASA said.

DAVINCI +, made up of a flying spaceship and an atmospheric drop probe, is expected to return the first high-resolution geological images of Venus’s “tessera.” Scientists believe that these features may be comparable to Earth’s continents and suggest that Venus has plate tectonics, according to a NASA forecast.

It is the closest neighbor to the planet Earth and the second largest planet from the Sun, similar in structure to Venus, but slightly smaller than Earth, with a diameter of about 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles).

Above the projected landscape is a thick, toxic atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide, with clouds of sulfuric acid. Conclusion The surface of Venus is an elusive greenhouse effect that cooks at a temperature as high as 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 Celsius), hot enough to melt lead.

Venus has recently received less scientific attention than Mars, the nearest neighbor to Earth and other destinations in the solar system.

“We are renewing the planet’s science program with intense exploration of a world that NASA has not visited in more than 30 years,” NASA science administrator Thomas Zurbuchen said in a statement announcing the missions.

NASA’s Magellan spacecraft made the first global map of Venus’ surface to reach Venus in 1990 and made global maps of the planet’s gravitational field.

In 1994, the spacecraft Magellan was sent to dive to the surface of Venus to collect data about its atmosphere before leaving operations.