{"id":11618,"date":"2021-06-13T21:07:28","date_gmt":"2021-06-13T13:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/esa-selects-radar-probe-to-join-armada-of-venus-missions\/"},"modified":"2021-06-13T21:07:28","modified_gmt":"2021-06-13T13:07:28","slug":"esa-selects-radar-probe-to-join-armada-of-venus-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/esa-selects-radar-probe-to-join-armada-of-venus-missions\/","title":{"rendered":"ESA selects radar probe to join armada of Venus missions"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The EnVision mission to Venus will explore why Earth\u2019s closest neighbor is so different. This artist\u2019s concept shows the spacecraft superimposed on global views of Earth and Venus. Credit: NASA \/ JAXA \/ ISAS \/ DARTS \/ Damia Bouic \/ VR2Planets<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A week after NASA selected two robotic missions for launch to Venus in the late 2020s, the European Space Agency has announced its own orbiter will launch to Venus as soon as 2031 with two radars and three spectrometer instruments to comprehensively study the planet from its core to the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

ESA announced June 10 that the EnVision mission will become the fifth medium-class, or \u201cM-class,\u201d mission in the agency\u2019s Cosmic Vision program, which selects future space science projects in large, medium and small cost classifications.<\/p>\n

\u201cA new era in the exploration of our closest, yet wildly different, solar system neighbor awaits us,\u201d said G\u00fcnther Hasinger, ESA\u2019s director of science. \u201cTogether 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

EnVision\u2019s selection by ESA came eight days after NASA announced it will launch two robotic \u201cDiscovery-class\u201d missions to Venus around 2029.<\/p>\n

One of NASA\u2019s missions, named DAVINCI+, will send a probe through the super-hot atmosphere of Venus to collect data as it descends through sulfuric acid clouds. Suspended under a parachute for an hour-long descent, the probe will measure the composition of Venus\u2019s atmosphere and take high-resolution pictures of its surface before touching down in a mountainous region called Alpha Regio.<\/p>\n

The DAVINCI+ entry probe could return data from the surface of Venus for a few minutes before succumbing to intense pressures and scorching temperatures near 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius).<\/p>\n

The other NASA mission to Venus is called VERITAS. It will consist of an orbiting spacecraft fitted with an X-band radar to peer through the blanket of clouds hiding the planet\u2019s landscape from cameras taking pictures in visible light. VERITAS will create a global map of Venus\u2019s surface significantly better than the one produced by NASA\u2019s Magellan radar mission in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n

DAVINCI+ and VERITAS will be NASA\u2019s first missions dedicated to Venus observations since 1994, when the Magellan mission ended.<\/p>\n

The EnVision mission will be ESA\u2019s second spacecraft to orbit Venus, following the Venus Express spacecraft, which observed the planet from orbit between 2006 and 2014.<\/p>\n

Japan\u2019s Akatsuki spacecraft is the only active spacecraft currently orbiting Venus. Akatsuki\u2019s science instruments are focused on observing the planet\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The selection of the EnVision mission ends the competition for ESA\u2019s fifth medium-class Cosmic Vision mission. The other finalist for the fifth M-class mission was THESEUS, an astronomy probe that would have monitored gamma-ray bursts, giant stellar explosions, to shed light on the lives of stars in the earliest billion years of the universe.<\/p>\n

EnVision could launch as soon as 2031 on a European Ariane 6 rocket, according to ESA. There are other launch opportunities available in 2032 and 2033.<\/p>\n

After a 15-month cruise, the EnVision spacecraft will maneuver into orbit around Venus, eventually settling in a quasi-polar orbit with an altitude between 136 miles and 335 miles (220-by-540 kilometers).<\/p>\n

Like the NASA missions, EnVision will attempt to help scientists better understand why Venus ended up a radically different planet than Earth, its nearest neighbor in the solar system. Venus and Earth about the same size and composition, and Venus may have once harbored oceans of liquid water.<\/p>\n

But Venus now has a crushing, toxic atmosphere with a surface air pressure more than 90 times thicker than Earth\u2019s. Knowledge of Venus\u2019s evolution could tell astronomers more about the environments of exoplanets \u2014 distant worlds around other stars.<\/p>\n

EnVision will host three spectrometers sensitive in infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths. The spectrometer will measure the composition in the atmosphere of Venus and search for volcanic gas plumes. The spectrometers will also analyze the chemical make-up of the surface, looking for changes that could be signs of recent volcanic eruptions, according to ESA.<\/p>\n

The European spacecraft will also have a high-frequency radar sounder to map underground layers to a depth of 3,300 feet, or 1 kilometer, ESA said. The sounder will look for evidence of buried geologic boundaries.<\/p>\n

NASA is also supplying an S-band synthetic aperture radar, called VenSAR, to be mounted on the EnVision spacecraft.<\/p>\n

The X-band radar on the VERITAS mission will collect data to generate a global map of Venus\u2019s topography. EnVision\u2019s radar will focus only on certain parts of Venus, but at higher resolution. The European mission will also carry more instruments than VERITAS, which has two science payloads.<\/p>\n

Measurements using radio signals passed between EnVision and ground stations will also yield insights into the interior structure of Venus, the planet\u2019s gravity field, and the structure of its atmosphere, ESA said.<\/p>\n

ESA did not disclose the projected cost of the EnVision mission, but the agency\u2019s M-class projects come with a cost cap of 550 million euros, roughly $665 million at current exchange rates. The cost cap does not include contributions from other space agencies, such as NASA.<\/p>\n

Lori Glaze, director of NASA\u2019s planetary science division, said the EnVision, VERITAS, and EnVision missions are complementary.<\/p>\n

\u201cESA\u2019s EnVision mission will provide unparalleled high-resolution imaging and polarimetry capabilities,\u201d she said in a statement. \u201cHigh-resolution images of many dynamic processes at Mars profoundly changed the way we thought about the Red Planet and images at similar scales have the potential to do the same for Venus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe combined results of EnVision and our Discovery missions will tell us how the forces of volcanism, tectonics and chemical weathering joined together to create and sustain Venus\u2019s runaway hothouse climate,\u201d said Tom Wagner, NASA\u2019s Discovery program scientist.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The EnVision mission to Venus will explore why Earth\u2019s closest neighbor is so different. This artist\u2019s concept shows the spacecraft superimposed on global views of Earth and Venus. Credit: NASA \/ JAXA \/ ISAS \/ DARTS \/ Damia Bouic \/ VR2Planets A week after NASA selected two robotic missions for launch to Venus in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}