NASA’s last mission to Venus, Magellan, ended in 1994. What renewed your interest in the planet after 27 years?
The Venus missions had been proposed primarily for NASA's New Frontiers programme, and then for Discovery, but they did not get picked. This is not because there wasn’t a desire to go back to Venus, it’s just that other proposals—for example, the Juno mission to Jupiter or the Osiris Rex, Lucy and Psyche missions aimed for asteroids—beat them. Venus was also not as big a priority as Mars, where people were eager to detect signs of life.
However, between Magellan and now, there has been amazing technological development. Radars are more sophisticated, as are the radiometers that will map the composition of Venus’s surface and measure the light it emits into space. The chemical instrumentation to measure the composition of the atmosphere is phenomenal; we can now measure components that are present in minute amounts, like noble gases, which are important in understanding the history of the atmosphere. This is why we picked missions to Venus now.
What scientific return do you expect from DAVINCI+ and VERITAS?
The missions we pick face strict competition. The process began two years ago; we had 18 proposals and we evaluated their science and implementation plans. We then narrowed them down to four. These teams then planned their missions at an even higher level of detail. We looked at their implementability, cost, NASA's budget, among other things. So while evaluating their scientific return, we do not just consider the science, but also how it would fit with our portfolio. Right now, we do not have other missions to Venus; we are also going to launch the James Webb Space Telescope to study exoplanets [planets that exist outside the solar system] soon. These missions would help with that.
Esta historia es de la edición June 16, 2021 de Down To Earth.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición June 16, 2021 de Down To Earth.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
The Pill That's Roiling US Drug Regulation
The hard right is challenging FDA's authority to regulate drugs with its lawsuit to ban America's most used abortion pill
TURN OVER A NEW LEAF
The young leaves of pilkhan free are a worthy alternative to leafy vegetables in the spring season
FAIR PRICE
Using a calculator, Uttar Pradesh scientifically fixes fee for transporting faecal sludge to treatment plants
THE FOREVER POLLUTANT
From production to usage to disposal, plastic is a threat to those who come in its contact SIDDHARTH GHANSHYAM SINGH
Seeds from the past
For a decade,200 villages in Odisha have conserved and grown 190 indigenous rice and millet varieties with proven climate resilience
TESTING TIMES
While the world is trying to identify uniform tests to measure soil biodiversity, it still needs investment and infrastructure to make them available to all
BREAKING NEW GROUND
Soil health is typically measured by its nutrient content, by presence of elements like nitrogen and phosphorus. No country in the world measures it in terms of soil biodiversity-a counting of underground faunal populations and microorganisms.
PRIME TRIGGER
Heat stress dominates debate on the causes of a mysterious chronic kidney disease that continues to baffle health experts and is on the rise globally
Coral catastrophe
Consistent ocean heating puts global corals at risk of mass bleaching in 2024
CHIPKO A DISTANT MEMORY
Whenever a dictionary of green terms is written, no matter in what language, it will contain at least one Hindi word-Chipko, which means to hug.