NASA Shares Challenges in Continuing Venus Exploration

NASA is planning to continue its exploration on Venus. The U.S. space agency wants to study the Earth's twin's atmosphere. However, the task is not easy, and the funding is low.

NASA Gives Update on Venus Exploration

NASA's Venus Exploration Analysis Group (VEXAG) gathered in late October in Albuquerque, N.M. VEXAG, the space agency's community-based forum for developing strategies and establishing objectives for future Venus studies, includes planetary scientists focusing on Venus. More than 400 people registered for the meeting in person and virtually- and over half of them attended for the first time, making it the largest gathering in VEXAG's history. During the opening remarks of the meeting, Lori Glaze, the head of NASA's planetary science division, provided an objective evaluation of the upcoming challenges and cautioned attendees to remain vigilant.

"At this point for 2024, we don't know what our funding is going to look like. There are a lot of uncertainties right now, which makes it a little hard to plan," Glaze announced at the event. "Let's all stay together-stand together and stand for NASA science and stand for science in general. I think if we do that, we can weather this, and we can pull through.... This hopefully could be a short-term tightening. We need to be ready to rebound."

The VERITAS researchers are ready for a shift. For reasons unrelated to VERITAS, NASA decided last year to postpone the mission until at least 2031. Among these was an overwhelming backlog of other high-priority projects at JPL, the space agency's principal facility for VERITAS.

The team also struggles with funding. Suzanne Smrekar, principal investigator of VERITAS at JPL, is concerned about the funding shortfall as it could weaken the support and commitment for the project. There was also a significant decline in critical personnel and specialists, which are crucial in the mission.

Smrekar said they couldn't afford to pay the personnel, and many had already left.

"Everyone has done their best to create notes and leave as many breadcrumbs as they can for people to pick things back up. But that's not a substitute for the knowledge developed over a decade," she added.

VEXAG's chair, Noam Izenberg, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., said. At the same time, the Veritas team awaits redemption; there are still many things to do, like preparatory research for the upcoming mission. He added that they wanted to restart and relaunch the Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography and Spectroscopy (VERITAS) soon and continue the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble Gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) project's path to launch in 2029.

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Venus Images From Venera Mission

It's hard to envision a lander surviving Venus' incredibly harsh environment. Nonetheless, Venera managed to transmit images from its surface. Between 1961 and 1984, the Soviet space program sent sixteen probes to Earth's sunside neighbor.

The landing sites were photographed in panoramic mode by Venera 9, 10, 13, and 14, while audio was recorded by Venera 13 and Venera 14. The first images, which were captured with Venera 9 and Venera 10, were taken in 1975 and with Venera 13 in 1982

People have recently reexamined the data, which is nearly 50 years old, using more sophisticated image processing techniques and technologies. The outcome is a series of fascinating pictures of Venus.

The photos paint a picture of an alien world with a golden color that is somehow menacing. The sunlight that breaks through Venus's clouds gives the surface a golden hue. The rocks and soil on the planet's surface are dark grayish.

This is thought to be related to how the surface came to be. Volcanic features make up the majority of Venus's surface. Volcanic activity may be still going on today.