Venus Can’t Wait--NASA Plans Blockbuster Return to Hothouse Neighbor

martyb writes:

Venus can't wait-NASA plans blockbuster return to hothouse neighbor:

Venus can no longer wait. NASA will send two new robotic missions to Earth's hothouse twin, the agency's new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced this afternoon at his "state of NASA" speech here at the agency's headquarters. The announcement effectively creates a new Venus program in one fell swoop.

[...] The first mission selected from four finalists named in February 2020 is DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging Plus) from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and led by James Garvin, chief scientist of Goddard's scientific division. It will send an armored sphere plunging through the venusian atmosphere, its instruments measuring noble gases to sort out the planet's origins and sniffing for sulfur and carbon near the surface for evidence of recent volcanic activity. DAVINCI+ will also include an orbiter to map the planet's geology, including its mysterious highlands.

[...] Analyzing isotopes of these noble gases in the atmosphere could give scientists a window into whether Venus started with as much water as Earth-and whether the planet might still be hiding water, the lubricant of plate tectonics, deep in its interior. Probing the rock composition could reveal whether, as some researchers suspect, the slightly elevated regions called tesserae are remnants of continents.

The second Venus mission is VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and led by Suzanne Smrekar, a planetary scientist at JPL. It will use synthetic aperture radar to peer through the planet's thick clouds and re-create its topography, revealing whether volcanoes or variants of tectonic plates are active on its surface.

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