Staff Editor
If you think flying into LaGuardia during a thunderstorm is intense and nerve wracking, that’s nothing compared to the final descent to the surface of Venus. NASA has a mission on the drawing board to touch down on the surface by June 2031.
Venus hot and also toxic
Going down on Venus is a dangerous proposition under the best of circumstances.
According to Stephanie Getty, who’s a deputy principal investigator at Goddard Space Center, “If we survive the touchdown at about 25 miles per hour, we could have up to 17-18 minutes of operations on the surface under ideal conditions.”
The DAVINCI mission should have it’s mission completed in the seconds before impact, so anything that happens on the surface is bonus points. Anyone who was ever in a car accident can appreciate the force of slamming into granite at 25 mph.
The Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging mission is destined to be the first to study the planet through descent all the way to touchdown. A previous fly-by sent home stunning natural light snapshots.
Basically, “a flying chemistry lab,” the probe can “measure different aspects of Venus’ atmosphere and climate.” They also can’t wait for the images of the highlands. This mission will have all the gear it needs to map the Venusian surface. Experts are looking for signs of plate tectonics. They want to study features called “tesserae,” similar to continents.
“This ensemble of chemistry, environmental, and descent imaging data will paint a picture of the layered Venus atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface in the mountains of Alpha Regio, which is twice the size of Texas,” Jim Garvin relates.
An ocean in her past
Venus might have had an ocean in the dim and distant past. They won’t know for sure until they get a good look at the data to tell what kinds of granite are exposed.
They also can tell a lot about the past on the planet from the gases that are in it’s air today. They’re looking for “components of water in the deepest part of the atmosphere.”
Before the furnace heated up and the surface of Venus became hot enough to melt lead, the planet was probably habitable.
The scientists are trying to figure out what happened there to cause such a drastic difference and will probably end up blaming it on an alien race infesting the surface who dared to use internal combustion engines to consume hydrocarbon compounds.
As she sits today, Venus “is a mostly dead planet with a toxic atmosphere 90 times thicker than that of our home planet and surface temperatures that reach 864 degrees Fahrenheit.” When DAVINCI drops down through the atmosphere, “a heat shield will be used to protect the probe until it’s about 42 miles above the surface. Then, it will jettison the shield to sample and analyze atmospheric gases.”
It should break through the clouds at around 100,000 feet. “The probe will touch-down in the Alpha Regio mountains but is not required to operate once it lands, as all of the required science data will be taken before reaching the surface.“
