The New Decade of Venus Exploration

The coming decade will see a veritable armada of spacecraft arrive to explore mysteries that have only become more compelling since the early days of the planet’s exploration. The Venus science community has a huge laundry list of questions about the second planet that has only grown since Magellan, the last US mission to visit. What science we can do at Venus has also changed over the decades. Venus, while still a uniquely harsh place, is more obtainable than ever. The next major missions: DAVINCI, and VERITAS from NASA and EnVIsion from ESA will fundamentally change what we know about Venus, its evolution, its relationship to earth, and its place as a representative terrestrial exoplanet. The Three goals that have guided prospective missions to Venus in recent years include 1) Understanding Venus’ early evolution and potential habitability to constrain the evolution of Venus-like worlds. 2) Understanding the atmospheric dynamics and composition on Venus. And 3) Understanding the geologic history preserved on the surface of Venus and the present-day couplings between the surface and atmosphere. The three upcoming major missions will address major components of all three of these goals, and pave the way for more. This talk will dive deeper into the open questions for Venus, and how each of the upcoming missions hopes to answer them, along with snapshots of other upcoming Venus investigations and the possibilities of the future.

Speaker: Noam Izenberg, Johnm Hopkins University