NASA released a video preview of its DAVINCI mission this week, which features a probe that will plummet to the scorching-hot surface of Venus.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, per Science Times, called Venus as Earth's evil twin. According to Daily Mail, the space agency has neglected the planet for the past three decades since many scientists thought it was a 'dead' planet.
However, the US space agency is preparing to send two new $500 million probes to Venus, and has released a fascinating animation depicting what will happen if one of them crashes to the planet's surface in the early 2030s.
Now, the space agency lets viewers ride through the planet's noxious atmosphere and watch what research experiments the DAVINCI+ spacecraft will conduct on its way to landing on the hellish planet.
New NASA Video Plummets Through Venus' Atmosphere
NASA released a new video on its YouTube channel. The footage explains how the DAVINCI mission will work and what it will do once it reaches Venus. It is scheduled to debut in 2029 and is named after the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It will attempt to address key concerns concerning Venus's origin, development, and makeup.
The DAVINCI mission will "transport a comprehensive suite of sensors to Venus to explore long-standing issues about Earth's sister planet," according to the video's commentary on NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center's official YouTube channel.
According to the footage, the DAVINCI mission is divided into two components. The main spacecraft and a probe that will drop through Venus' atmosphere, collecting data and making observations. Two flybys of the planet will be conducted by the primary spacecraft in order to examine its atmosphere and nightside surface.
The probe will be deployed seven months later for a one-hour fall through the clouds, sensing composition, temperatures, pressures, and winds at each layer of Venus's atmosphere.
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The probe will send all of this information back to Earth, where scientists seek to unravel the mysteries of Earth's twin planet, including if it formerly had water and whether it may one day be habitable.
Probe Now Poised To Lead People To Earth's Evil Twin
According to NDTV, the narrator states in the video that Venus is waiting for everyone. DAVINCI is poised to lead people there and usher in a new Venus renaissance.
The video's caption said some scientists believe Venus may have previously been more Earth-like in the past. The DAVINCI statistics will assist us in determining whether or not this fascinating idea is correct."
The video description added that Venus now has a blistering surface hotter than the typical kitchen oven and a complicated atmosphere 90 times thicker than Earth's, comprised primarily of carbon dioxide and sulfuric acid clouds.
Near the end of the video, the narrator said that findings from this data collection would reveal if Venus were genuinely livable.
DAVINCI Mission Profile
Republic World said the DAVINCI mission's spacecraft would depart Earth with various equipment to explore Earth's sister planet's origin, evolution, and composition.
The DAVINCI carrier relay will use the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer (CUVIS) and imaging spacecraft to investigate the planet's dayside and collect data about undiscovered substances in Venus' upper atmosphere.
The Venus Imaging System for Observational Reconnaissance (VISOR) will explore the nightside of Venus in infrared during the second flyby to learn more about how the planet's highlands evolved.
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