Venus - NASA is returning for you!
We have known our neighborhood planet Mars for a while, its color, components, and the missions that took part in it. But, did you know that NASA is finally returning to Venus? They will check whether the hot, poisonous planet will ever be habitable. I know that the word “hot” and “poisonous” will scare you but that’s what NASA will check for us Earthlings after December 2027. I also know that this is a long wait but still, it is something to look forward to.
To refresh everyone’s memory, NASA last launched its exploration of Venus in 1989. It was called the Magellan mission; named after Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer (1480-1521). With my soon-to-be Portuguese citizenship, it’s a mission I’m particularly fond of. It was a historical mission since it was the first deep-space probe launched by the United States in 11 years at that time and also the first probe launched by a space shuttle. The mission launched 33 years today; May 4, 1989, and ended its mission on October 13, 1994.
The strange layering of volcanic activity and impact craters is visible in a Magellan image dubbed "Crater Farm." This three-dimensional perspective view of Venus's surface depicts three impact craters. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
From the picture above, you will notice that it looks so rocky and brutally hot. The surface is approximately 870 F (465 C) and the pressure on the surface is about 90 times the pressure at sea level on Earth. Aside from its extreme temperature and surface pressure, the sulfuric acid that surrounds the entire planet will corrode anything passing through them.
NASA chose two missions for this new Venus exploration - Davinci+ and Veritas. Both of them will provide different information that will help us better understand this awesome planet. So, while we wait for these new explorations to happen, what do we know so far about Venus aside from being the second planet near the Sun, its hot surface, immense surface pressure, and the sulfuric acid that surrounds it?
Some people believe that it was once a beautiful (not that it is ugly now!) planet, but studies have shown that Venus may have had surface water and a habitable environment for approximately 3 billion years, and it may have remained in this state until 700 to 750 million years ago.
Did you know that a day on Venus is equivalent to 117 days on Earth, according to NASA? It was that slow and might have been one of the reasons for its current situation. But according to computer modeling of the planet's ancient climate by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to 2 billion years in its early history.
A land-ocean pattern similar to the one shown above was used in a climate model to demonstrate how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from harsh sunlight, allowing the planet to become habitable.
So, what happened during that period? Venus followed a different evolutionary path than that of the Earth. NASA's Pioneer mission to Venus in the 1980s first suggested that Venus may have once had an ocean. Venus, on the other hand, is much closer to the sun than Earth and thus receives far more sunlight. As a result, the planet's early ocean evaporated, water-vapor molecules were shattered by ultraviolet radiation, and hydrogen escaped into space. With no water on the surface, carbon dioxide accumulated in the atmosphere, causing a so-called runaway greenhouse effect that resulted in the current conditions.
As the Parker Solar Probe flew by Venus on its fourth flyby, its WISPR instrument captured these images, which were then stitched together to form a video depicting the planet's nightside surface.
Credits: NASA/APL/NRL
Last February 2022, NASA released the analysis of the moving image above that shows Venus’ nightside in its entirety. This was taken a year before (February 2021) when NASA’s Parker Solar Probe embarked on its fourth pass in February 2021. These images are so amazing that my inner astronomer-self wants very much to vist (had it not been for its super hot surface and atmosphere, and the fact that I am not an astronaut!). Any kid would love to see Venus or any planetary object for that matter because we are always curious as to what is out there. We can only feast on these images but the experience of actually seeing them is something different.
