Venus Stories
Venus on Earth: NASA’s VERITAS Science Team Studies Volcanic Iceland
The JPL-led international team used the island as a stand-in for Venus to test radar technologies that will help uncover the planet’s ground truth. With its crushing atmospheric pressure, clouds of sulfuric acid, and searing surface temperature, Venus is an…
NASA’s Magellan Data Reveals Volcanic Activity on Venus
In a first, scientists have seen direct evidence of active volcanism on Earth’s twin, setting the stage for the agency’s VERITAS mission to investigate.
Study Finds Venus’ ‘Squishy’ Outer Shell May Be Resurfacing the Planet
The research uses archival NASA data to show that Venus may be losing heat from geologic activity in regions called coronae, possibly like early tectonic activity on Earth.
NASA Study: Massive Volcanism May Have Altered Ancient Venus’ Climate
Volcanic activity lasting hundreds to thousands of centuries and erupting massive amounts of material may have helped transform Venus from a temperate and wet world to the acidic hothouse it is today, a NASA paper suggests. The paper also discusses…
NASA Instrument to Measure Temperature, Pressure, and Wind on Venus
The VASI (Venus Atmospheric Structure Investigation) instrument aboard NASA’s Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, or DAVINCI, mission to Venus, together with the other instruments on this mission, aims to investigate Venus’ mysterious atmosphere by painting…
60 Years Ago: Mariner 2 Launches to Explore Venus
In the early 1960s, in addition to taking on the challenge to land men on the Moon by the end of the decade, NASA also set its sights on exploring our planetary neighbors. The agency gave responsibility for planetary exploration…
NASA’s DAVINCI Mission To Take the Plunge Through Massive Atmosphere of Venus
In a recently published paper, NASA scientists and engineers give new details about the agency’s Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging (DAVINCI) mission, which will descend through the layered Venus atmosphere to the surface of the planet in mid-2031. DAVINCI is the…
Student-Built, Dime-Sized Instrument Is Venus-bound on NASA’s DAVINCI
Venus Oxygen Fugacity (VfOx) is a small, button-sized sensor aboard NASA’s DAVINCI mission to Venus’ atmosphere that will be designed, fabricated, tested, operated, and analyzed by undergraduate and graduate students as the mission’s Student Collaboration Experiment. Planned for launch in…
Meet VMS – the briefcase-sized chemistry lab headed to Venus
Short for Venus Mass Spectrometer, VMS is one of five instruments aboard the DAVINCI descent probe. Launching in 2029, DAVINCI will be the first US probe mission to enter Venus’ atmosphere in over 40 years. The goal of the mission…
NASA’s DAVINCI Explores Ten Mysteries of Venus
The surface of Venus is completely inhospitable for life: barren, dry, crushed under an atmosphere about 90 times the pressure of Earth’s and roasted by temperatures two times hotter than an oven. But was it always that way? Could Venus…