Nasa starts work on two Venus missions to discover its mysterious past theiet.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theiet.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Two new NASA missions will uncover the secrets of Venus
(Photo / CNN)
It s time to revisit Venus, our closest planetary neighbour.
Two new missions to Earth s twin have been greenlit by NASA via the agency s Discovery Program. These missions, which were the two finalists selected from four concepts NASA highlighted in February 2020, will shed light on how Venus became the inhospitable world it is today, despite the fact that it shares many characteristics with Earth.
One mission would focus on the Venusian atmosphere, while the other would map the planet s surface.
Venus may have been the first habitable world in our solar system, including an ocean and climate similar to Earth but something happened to turn it into a planet with temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
2021-06-03 17:00:59 GMT2021-06-04 01:00:59(Beijing Time) Sina English
NASA announced plans on Wednesday to launch a pair of missions to Venus between 2028 and 2030 – its first in decades – to study the atmosphere and geologic features of Earth s so-called sister planet and better understand why the two emerged so differently.
The space agency s new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced two new robotic missions to the solar system s hottest planet, during his first major address to employees on Wednesday. These two sister missions both aim to understand how Venus became an inferno-like world capable of melting lead at the surface, Nelson said.
The US space agency said it was awarding about US$500 million each to develop the two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ (short for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry and Imaging) and VERITAS (an acronym for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy).