Why in news
A team of scientists in the U.S. have made a crucial advance in water lost in Venus
The team’s findings, reported in a paper in Nature, could plug a long-standing gap between the amount of water scientists expected Venus to have lost in the last 4.5 billion years and how much satellite observations say the planet has actually lost, which is a lot more.
Venus
It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.
It is the second planet from the Sun and sixth in the solar system in size and mass.
It is the second brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, probably that is the reason why it was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.
Characteristics:
Unlike the other planets in our solar system, Venus and Uranus spin clockwise on their axis.
It is the hottest planet in the solar system because of the high concentration of carbon dioxide which works to produce an intense greenhouse effect.
A day on Venus is longer than a year.
It takes Venus longer to rotate once on its axis than to complete one orbit of the Sun.
Venus has been called Earth’s twin because of the similarities in their masses, sizes, and densities and their similar relative locations in the solar system.
No planet approaches closer to Earth than Venus; at its nearest it is the closest large body to Earth other than the Moon.
Venus has 90 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth
Future Venus Missions
DaVinci Plus:
It will be the first of the two mission by NASA, it will analyze the thick, cloudy Venusian atmosphere in an attempt to determine whether the inferno planet ever had an ocean and was possibly habitable.
A small craft will plunge through the atmosphere to measure the gases.
Veritas:
It will be the second one by NASA seeking a geologic history by mapping the rocky planet’s surface.
Shukrayaan I
Shukrayaan I will be an Orbiter Mission.
Its scientific payloads currently include a high-resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a ground-penetrating radar.
SAR would examine Venus’ surface, despite the clouds around the planet, which lowers visibility.
It refers to a technique for producing high-resolution images.
Because of the precision, the radar can penetrate clouds and darkness, which means that it can collect data day and night in any weather.
EnVision
EnVision is an orbital mission to Venus being developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) that is planned to perform high-resolution radar mapping and atmospheric studies.
EnVision is designed to help scientists understand the relationships between its geological activity and the atmosphere, and it would investigate why Venus and Earth took such different evolutionary paths.
The mission will be conducted in collaboration with NASA, with the potential sharing of responsibilities currently under assessment.
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