SPACE RACE 3.0
European Space Agency adds another new Venus mission
June 10 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency has approved a new mission to study Venus -- the third new mission to Venus to be announced in the past two weeks.
The ESA announced Thursday it will launch the EnVision orbiter in 2031 or 2032, with a budget of roughly $610 million.
It will follow two NASA missions to Venus that are scheduled to launch in a three-year span starting in 2028. NASA announced those missions, known as DAVINCI+ and Veritas, on June 2.
EnVision will scan specific regions of the Venusian surface that may be selected using data from Veritas, said Günther Hasinger, ESA director of science, in an interview Thursday.
"Venus has been kind of ignored for a long time. So I believe we will get similar details of Venus as we have today for Mars, once these missions are concluded," Hasinger said.
Such knowledge could help scientists combat the worst impact of climate change on Earth, since the Venusian atmosphere may have undergone similar changes, he said.
All three Venus missions will attempt to answer the same difficult question that has vexed scientists for decades: Why did Venus, which is similar in size and location in the solar system to Earth, evolve into a hellish environment with temperatures that can melt lead at the surface?
Veritas will map the entire surface of the planet, while EnVision targets mountainous regions known as tesserae. DAVINCI+ will plummet through the atmosphere to the surface in an hour-long journey as it samples the air using various sensors.
EnVision's key instruments will be radar that can penetrate the thick sulfuric-acid clouds in the Venus atmosphere. NASA will supply key components for EnVision.
That radar will provide detailed maps of the surface -- 10 to 50 times more accurate than NASA's previous Magellan orbiter launched in 1989, said Adriana Ocampo, NASA's program scientist for the EnVision mission, in an interview.
"It's actually the same team that's working on EnVision and Veritas, so this would be complementary science. This will serve to maximize science to ad
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