Yeah.
I like to think of Venus as sort of our evil twin.
Right.
So Venus is similar in size to our planet.
They're just about the same size.
They're right next to each other in the solar system.
Venus is just one step in from where we are.
But when it comes to the environment, on the surface,
Venus is very, very different.
So Venus has a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere
at the surface of the planet of Venus.
It's 900 degrees Fahrenheit.
Think the inside of a wood fired pizza oven.
It is 90 times the Earth's pressure at our surface.
So think like the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean.
And those clouds.
Those clouds are full of sulfuric acid.
So it's acidic and it's hot and it's high pressure.
And it's very much like our evil twin.
So in 2021,
NASA's selected two Venus missions, DAVINCI and Veritas.
And these two missions are going to
they're going to tell us some different things about Venus.
So DAVINCI is going to be the first time that we've sent a probe
through the atmosphere this century as that probe goes
in, it's going to make little measurements,
little sips of the atmosphere,
make pressure and temperature measurements as it goes down.
And it's going to tell us a lot about the origin and evolution of that atmosphere,
as well as maybe whether or not Venus had oceans in the past.
Veritas is an orbital mission, and so it's going to orbit around Venus
and it's going to be making lots of measurements of the surface and interior
and help us sort of understand how the solid planet evolved
and what what's happening on the surface now, how it may be active today.
You know, the
really exciting thing about The DAVINCI mission is that as it goes
through the atmosphere, it's going to be making measurements all the way down.
And so it's going to tell us, you know, with with sort of unprecedented
resolution and information, what each different level is
like in terms of temperature and pressure and composition and things like that.
It's going to tell us a lot more about not the
not only the atmosphere as a whole,
but each level of the atmosphere as it goes down.
And then once it gets below the cloud deck, it's going to be taking pictures
with it.
One of the highest resolution cameras we've sent to Venus yet
and really getting, you know, real pictures of this high of these
these highlands, these tessera, which are some of the oldest surface
areas on the planet.
So it's really going to help us unlock a lot of information about the atmosphere.
You know,
Venus is sort of shrouded in mystery, right?
Like because Venus
is very similar to Earth, but in some ways very different than Earth.
There's more to understand.
You know, our earliest missions to Venus really changed our perception
of what the planet was like.
And so that got us to a place
where we were able to learn a little bit about Venus.
And now that we've been able to take all of that data, analyze that data, use,
you know, combine that data with some of our ground based assets,
we have some fantastic, you know,
sort of radio images of Venus and things like that.
We're able to sort of use that in science as an iterative process.
And so we've learned more from our previous missions
and that allows us to sort of make more targeted questions
with our next missions like Da Vinci and Veritas sort of understand more.
You know, we have some ideas about this so we can now have a hypothesis about what
formed the atmosphere, and now we can sort of test those hypotheses.
Yeah.
So Venus, the intense pressure
and heat on the surface of Venus is certainly challenging for
this is going to be certainly challenging for The DAVINCI mission.
The first thing that we have, of course, is that as the probe comes down,
it has a parachute, and the parachute will help slow it down
in that upper atmosphere of Venus, where it's not quite as thick.
And as it comes down, as the atmosphere gets thicker and thicker,
at some point, it will it will it will release that parachute.
And at that point, it's almost like it's less like it's falling through the air
and more like it's sinking because the deeper parts of Venus's
atmosphere are actually more liquid than gas.
And as it starts going down,
the pressure is increasing, the temperature is increasing.
So this probe is about the size of a hula hoop,
and it's made of titanium, which is a very resistant metal.
And so as it's coming down, it's
got this quarter inch of titanium and about an inch thick of insulation.
And it's
the only parts that are being exposed are those
that are actively measuring the atmosphere.
So the rest of it is being protected in that titanium sphere.
And as it comes down and descends, it's making measurements the whole way down
in that and that that titanium and that insulation are protecting
the instruments for as long as possible until we get to the surface.
And ultimately the probe will succumb to Venus's temperature and pressure.
But we hope that we're going to get a lot of science along the way.