With multiple spacecraft heading to Venus in the coming years, we’re set to learn a lot more about the hellish planet.

Isaac SchultzYesterday 9:00AM30SaveAlerts

https://gizmodo.com/why-venus-is-soon-to-be-the-most-exciting-place-in-the-1847115184

It’s hot. It’s toxic. It spins backwards and is covered in volcanoes. And we’re headed there soon. Three Venus missions, recently announced by NASA and the European Space Agency, are going to reveal more than we’ve ever known about the scorcher of a planet, a place that many scientists describe as Earth’s evil twin.

In recent weeks, NASA green-lit two Venus missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI+, while the ESA announced a Venus orbiter called EnVision. Already, planetary scientists are exhilarated by the possibilities. We spoke with several experts about why Venus is so exciting.

“It’s only beginning to hit me what this means,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University, in a video call. “I’m gonna lose my shit every time a new paper comes out of it.” Fundamentally, he said, the reason for our return to Venus comes down to understanding why the planet “is our sibling and not our twin.”

“How is it that you have a planet that is almost the same size as Earth, made of presumably about the same stuff, in about the same compositions, orbiting the same star, and that has the same age—how do you have two worlds that are on paper the same, that are yet so vastly different?” Byrne explained. “EnVision, VERITAS, and DAVINCI+ are going to provide an unbelievable and unexpectedly solid foundation for how we tackle this question.”

READ MORE

The Last Images From Doomed Space ProbesAging Hubble Space Telescope in Safe Mode Following Computer GlitchChina Set to Launch First Crew to Its New Space Station