​Venus becomes the third celestial body in the Solar System known to have active volcanism. Until now, active volcanoes were only known to exist on Earth and Jupiter’s moon Io, but a study published March 15 in the American journal Science confirms that recent volcanic eruptions have also been observed on Venus, after re-analyzing some radar images of the planet. The Magellan probe, made in 1991.

Researchers suspected that the relatively young surface of the planet Venus was formed by lava from active volcanoes, but until now they had no clear confirmation that volcanic eruptions occur on Venus: Venus’s atmosphere is extremely dense, and the surface images we have of the planet are extremely sparse. They come from 4 Soviet probes

which penetrated the dense acidic atmosphere and was able to send back several images of the surface (Venus 9 and 10 in 1975 and Venus 13 and 14 in 1982), but they did not provide a definitive conclusion about the planet’s volcanism.

An alternative approach was developed by the Magellan probe, which orbited the planet Venus between 1990 and 1994. The probe had a special radar on board that could see behind the dense clouds of the planet and identify formations on the surface. After reanalyzing the data provided by Magellan, the researchers found in a series of images taken in 1991 at a distance of 8 months, changes on the surface of the planet that were associated with the lava flow, and the conclusion of the study, published in the journal Science, was that there are active volcanoes on Venus.

These new data will help us better understand the evolution of the planet Venus, which, although similar to Earth, had a very different history: today the surface of the planet has a temperature of more than 400 degrees Celsius, and the atmosphere contains mainly carbon dioxide, but also sulfuric acid vapors.

We don’t know what went wrong in the planet’s past and why we have a strong greenhouse effect that makes the planet so inhospitable. However, a study published in 2020 found phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, a chemical compound in too high a concentration to be explained by processes that do not involve metabolic reactions, ie… traces of life. The results are controversial, but the data on Venus currently available to the scientific community is extremely limited.

However, it is possible that in the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere, where the pressure and temperature are lower, and where there is water vapor, some life forms may still survive, but we do not yet have this clear confirmation. .

The truth is that we don’t know much about the neighboring planet. After Magellan, the only probes that entered the orbit of the planet were the European probe Venus Express, which operated from 2006-2014, and the Japanese probe Akatsuki, active since 2015 (not without emotions, because the first attempt to enter orbit in 2010 failed ), but is much less complex than the Venus Express.

Other probes flew past the planet in a hurry to reach other celestial bodies, which meant that the data collected was few and limited in time. But this may change in the future.

Two missions to Venus are currently planned: VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radioscience, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy) and DAVINCI+ (Venus Deep Atmosphere Noble Gas, Chemistry, and Imaging). If DAVINCI+ has a real chance of launch, the same cannot be said for VERITAS: the mission’s budget has been drastically reduced, reaching $1.5 million per year, not enough to assemble and launch the probe, which was supposed to take place in 2028 (unkind words say, that the money was transferred to the Mars Sample Return mission).

VERITAS would be a modern version of the Magellan probe, which was used to map the planet’s surface using orbital radar observations. In addition to the orbiting probe, DAVINCI+ includes a module that will descend through the planet’s atmosphere, recording data until it reaches the planet’s surface.

And if the money from the state budget is not enough for two missions to Venus, perhaps the solution will come from the private sector: Peter Beck, the director of Rocket Lab, which builds and launches the Electron rocket, has promised to finance a private mission to Venus. It sounds like a bold idea, but Peter Beck has all the necessary tools at hand: his company not only assembles rockets, but also an additional upper stage called Photon, which

it can be equipped with scientific instruments and sent to Venus.

Of course, it won’t be as complex as NASA missions, but given the recent miniaturization of electronic components, the Photon and Electron can be successfully used for such a mission and try to fill a gap in planetary exploration that focuses more on Mars than on Mars. on another nearby planet.

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