Author: Lisa Grossman / Source: Science News for Students
There’s a planet next door that could explain the origins of life in the universe. It was probably once covered in oceans. It may have been able to support life for billions of years.
No surprise, astronomers are desperate to land spacecraft there.The planet is not Mars. It’s Earth’s twin, Venus.
Despite its appeal, the second planet from the sun is one of the hardest places in the solar system to get to know. That’s partly because modern Venus is famously hellish. Temperatures are hot enough to melt lead. Choking clouds of sulfuric acid swirl through its atmosphere.
Today, researchers who want to explore Venus say they have the technology to master such challenging conditions. “There’s a perception that Venus is a very difficult place to have a mission,” says Darby Dyar. She is a planetary scientist at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. “Everybody knows about the high pressures and temperatures on Venus, so people think we don’t have technology to survive that. The answer is that we do.”
Indeed, researchers are actively developing Venus-defying technology.
In 2017, there were five proposed Venus projects. One was a mapping orbiter. It would probe the atmosphere as it fell through it. Others were landers that would zap rocks with lasers. From a technology point of view, all were considered ready to go. And the laser team actually got money to develop some parts for the system.
But the other programs failed to find funding.“Earth’s so-called ‘twin’ planet Venus is a fascinating body,” notes Thomas Zurbuchen. He is the associate administrator for NASA’s science mission programs in Washington, D.C. The problem, he explains, is that “NASA’s mission selection process is highly competitive. By that he means that right now there are more good ideas than money available to build them all.
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Visiting Venus
In the search for alien life, Venus and Earth would look equally promising from afar. Both are roughly the same size and mass. Venus lies just outside the sun’s habitable zone. That zone has temperatures that could keep liquid water stable on a planet’s surface.
No spacecraft have landed on the surface of Venus since 1985. A few orbiters have visited Earth’s neighbor in the past decade. The European Space Agency’s Venus Express was one. It visited Venus from 2006 to 2014. The other is the Japanese space agency’s Akatsuki. It has been orbiting Venus since December 2015. Still, no NASA craft has visited Earth’s twin since 1994. That’s when the Magellan craft plunged into the atmosphere of Venus and burned up.
One obvious barrier is the planet’s thick atmosphere. It is 96.5 percent carbon dioxide. That blocks scientists’ view of the surface in almost all wavelengths of light. But it turns out that the atmosphere is transparent to at least five wavelengths of light. That transparency could help identify different minerals. And Venus Express proved it would work.
Looking at the planet in one infrared (In-frah-RED) wavelength allowed astronomers to see hot spots. These might be signs of active volcanoes. An orbiter that used the other four wavelengths might learn even more, Dyar says.
Ground truth
To really understand the surface, scientists want to land a craft there. It would have to contend with the opaque atmosphere while looking for a safe place to touch down. The best map of the planet’s surface is based on radar data from Magellan…
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