First Mars, now Venus. There are already three new missions destined to visit the infernal twin of the Earth after the announcement of the European Space Agency to also send a space mission to Venus. Joining VERITAS and DAVINCI + will be EnVision, the orbiter of ESA’s Cosmic Vision plan.
The European Space Agency (ESA) joins the ship Venus, announcing that it will launch a mission in the early 2030s.
“A new era awaits us in the exploration of our closest, albeit tremendously different, neighbor of the solar system,” explains Günther Hasinger, ESA’s science director, in a statement. “Along with the recently announced NASA-led Venus missions, we will have an extremely comprehensive science program on this enigmatic planet well into the next decade.”
Visitors from Venus
In addition to the two NASA missions announced on June 2, the European Space Agency will send its mission to study why our sweltering neighbor is so different from Earth.
Since 1990 there have only been two dedicated missions to the Venusian planet : ESA’s Venus Express orbiter and Akatsuki from Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency. While Venus Express primarily focused on atmospheric research. EnVision will have a slightly broader goal. Its main mission will be to understand how geological processes inside Venus, such as volcanism and the release of heat from the interior of the planet, have affected the atmosphere over time.
EnVision Instruments
It will have three outstanding scientific instruments:
- A radar probe to provide information on the underground structure of the planet
- A set of spectrometers to examine the chemical composition of the surface and atmosphere of Venus
- An additional radar system for mapping the surface ( VenSAR , provided by NASA).
EnVision is scheduled to take off shortly after NASA missions, between 2031 and 2033 (and with a 15-month cruise time and a 16-month orbital adaptation period that will place it in a quasi-polar orbit; specifically, EnVision will place in a low orbit of Venus, between 220 and 540 kilometers from the planet), and all of them will offer us the most detailed and complete view of this planet.
“Our growing fleet of missions will provide us, and future generations, with the best information about how our planetary neighborhood functions , particularly relevant in an era when we are discovering more and more unique exoplanet systems,” concludes Hasinger.
The mission was chosen in lieu of an astrophysics project called Theseus, which would have studied very distant gamma-ray bursts and other transient events, with the goal of understanding the life cycle of early stars , according to ESA.
Questions to answer
Is Venus Geologically Active Yet? Will it have oceans? Could it have harbored life? Why did Venus and Earth evolve so differently?
These missions will open up our knowledge about the planet a little more and could help us discover if it would represent a vision of the future of the Earth if it succumbs to a catastrophic greenhouse effect . Recall that Venus has the most intense greenhouse effect that we know of, with an atmosphere full of carbon dioxide.
Venus, here we go.
