The spacecraft is expected to explore the Venusian atmosphere in layers and reach its surface in June 2031. The DAVINCI mission will be able to capture data about Venus that scientists have been eager to measure since the early 1980s.
Only two NASA missions have previously visited the second planet from our sun: Pioneer in 1978 and Magellanic in the early 1990s.
The DAVINCI spacecraft will essentially serve as a laboratory for flying chemistry that can measure different aspects of Venus’ atmosphere and climate and take the first images of the planet’s highland descent. The instruments of the mission will also be able to map the surface of Venus and detect the composition of the mountainous lands of Venus.
These features, called “tiles,” may be similar to Earth’s continents, meaning that Venus may have plate tectonics, according to NASA scientists.
“This set of chemical, environmental, and descent imaging data will paint a picture of the atmosphere of Venus in layers and how it interacts with the surface of the Alpha Regio Mountains, which is twice the size of Texas.” said Jim Garvin, director of DAVINCI. researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.
“These measures will allow us to assess historical aspects of the atmosphere, as well as detect special types of rocks on the surface, such as granite, while looking for revealing landscape features that can inform us about erosion or other formation processes.”
The initiative would also investigate the possibility of an ocean past Venus by measuring gases and water components in the deepest part of the atmosphere. Venus may have been the first habitable world in our solar system, including an Earth-like ocean and climate, but something happened to make it a planet with temperatures hot enough to melt lead.
According to a 2019 study, Venus probably maintained stable temperatures and housed liquid water for billions of years before an event triggered drastic changes on the planet. The author of the study, physicist Michael Way of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science in New York City, also co-authored a 2016 study of climate and oceans on Venus in his past.
Now, Venus is a mostly dead planet with a toxic atmosphere 90 times thicker than that of our home planet and surface temperatures reaching 864 degrees Fahrenheit (462 degrees Celsius).
Because DAVINCI flies through Venus several times, he will use two instruments to study the clouds and map the highlands from orbit. It will then drop a descent probe that carries five instruments to the surface.
The descent will take approximately one hour and a heat shield will be used to protect the probe until it is about 42 miles (67 kilometers) above the surface. He will then launch the shield to sample and analyze atmospheric gases. The descent probe will also capture hundreds of images once it clears Venus clouds at 100,000 feet (30,500 meters) above the surface.
“The probe will land in the Alpha Regio Mountains, but it doesn’t have to work once it lands, as all the necessary scientific data will be taken before it reaches the surface,” Stephanie Getty, Goddard’s deputy chief researcher, said in a statement. statement. “If we survive the landing at about 25 miles per hour (11 meters / second), we could have up to 17-18 minutes of surface operations in ideal conditions.”