Explained | NASA’s missions to Venus

NASA recently announced plans to return to planet Venus after over 30 years. The two missions will be launched at the end of the decade and are aimed at learning how our planetary neighbour became a hellscape while Earth thrived with life.

Venus is often referred to as Earth’s twin. Both the planets are almost alike in size, density and gravity. Despite similar physical makeup, like most siblings we know of, the two worlds turned out to be drastically different from each other. While Earth is a heaven for life, Venus is a blistering hellscape. Venus has a thick, toxic atmosphere filled with carbon dioxide and at 850 degrees Fahrenheit, it is the hottest planet in the solar system. It has a crushing air pressure and is perpetually shrouded in thick, yellowish clouds of sulphuric acid. Though Venus was the first ever planet to be explored by a spacecraft (Russia’s Venera 1 in 1961), space agencies have largely ignored Venus in the last few decades and focussed on other planets, especially Mars. But that’s set to change with NASA, the U.S. Space Agency, announcing two robotic missions to Venus as part of the Discovery Program. Recent studies, one suggesting that the planet's surface was habitable for several billion years, and another suggesting presence of microbes in Venusian skies, have reinvigorated an interest in Venus.