[ExI] Hell Yeah, Another Venus Mission Just Got the Green Light

[John Grigg]

I have always been deeply fascinated by Venus, and now three probes are
headed that way! I suspect if they look carefully enough, they will find
the bikini clad warrior women Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about in the
Carson of Venus series...  ;  )

"It’s been just a week since NASA announced its two Venus missions
<https://gizmodo.com/hell-yes-were-going-to-venus-1847019429>, and now
there’s another one to look forward to. The European Space Agency today
announced EnVision, its own Venus-bound spacecraft, slated to launch in the
early 2030s.

“A new era in the exploration of our closest, yet wildly different, Solar
System neighbor awaits us,” said Günther Hasinger, the agency’s science
director, in a press release
<https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/ESA_selects_revolutionary_Venus_mission_EnVision>.
“Together with the newly announced NASA-led Venus missions, we will have an
extremely comprehensive science program at this enigmatic planet well into
the next decade.”

Mysterious about our hot yellow wasteland of a neighbor are manifold: How
did it get so hot? Why is it so toxic? Does it still have active volcanoes?
Could life somehow exist in its atmosphere? In short, why did it end up so
different from Earth? Around the same time as NASA’s VERITAS and DAVINCI+
missions, EnVision will also head to Venus to find out. EnVision is more
comparable to VERITAS because they’re both orbiters; DAVINCI+ aims to land
on the surface. EnVision will be equipped with instruments to unpack the
planet’s geology, internal structure, gravitational field, atmosphere, and
surface composition. Together, the upcoming missions will give us a
refined, comprehensive look at Venus’ current state and evolution."
https://gizmodo.com/hell-yeah-another-venus-mission-just-got-the-green-lig-1847070843
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