6 We set our sights on Venus
VENUS IS ALREADY the hottest destination in the solar system — literally, with surface temperatures up to
890 degrees Fahrenheit (470 degrees Celsius). But now it’s also figuratively the hottest destination: In 2021, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) selected three new missions aimed at Earth’s sister planet.
On June 2, NASA announced it would send two spacecraft to Venus by 2030: VERITAS, short for Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography & Spectroscopy; and DAVINCI, short for Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging. Eight days later, ESA announced its EnVision mission will launch for Venus in the early 2030s.
The DAVINCI orbiter will combine flybys of the planet with an orbiter that will drop the first probe sent into the venusian atmosphere by the U.S. since 1978. This spherical probe will sample the chemistry of the planet’s thick, forbidding atmosphere hundreds of times as it passes through each layer during an hour-long descent. “Our approach is to target that big atmosphere as a wondrous chemical laboratory of environments and histories that we can read in the record of the chemistry,” says DAVINCI principal investigator James Garvin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The probe will also snap images as it falls, providing the highest-resolution views yet of its mountainous landing site, called Alpha Regio, from beneath Venus’ thick cloud cover.
Meanwhile, the VERITAS orbiter will use radar to pierce Venus’ obscuring clouds and map the entire surface in 3D — the first comprehensive look at that surface since NASA’s Magellan mission ended in 1994. Near-infrared sensors will allow researchers to determine important planetary properties, such as surface composition, gravitational field strength, and interior structure. VERITAS will
also look for signs of recent volcanic activity and other geologic processes. Its goal is to uncover clues about Venus’ geological past and present, revealing how the planet became the forbidding landscape it is today.
Finally, the EnVision orbiter is an ESA-led collaboration with NASA to globally study Venus in exquisite detail. Its suite of instruments includes spectrometers to measure atmospheric composition, a sounder to probe the planet’s interior, radar to map the surface in high
resolution, and a radio tracker to study a broad range of characteristics, from the planet’s gravity field and interior to the structure of its atmosphere.
Because Venus is so similar to our home planet in size, mass, and composition, there is much it can tell us about how nearly identical planets can evolve so differently, even in the same system. Furthermore, Garvin says, the lessons we learn there can be applied to Venuslike extrasolar planets, which current and upcoming exoplanet surveys are expected to find in spades.
But despite its proximity to Earth, Venus is vastly understudied compared to our other planetary neighbor, Mars. The Magellan data are now decades old, which means that in terms of understanding Venus, “where we are today is this huge opportunity staring at us — a lost frontier that we can now rediscover,” says Garvin. These three new missions will perfectly complement one another, together painting the clearest picture we’ve ever had of the mysterious planet next door.