NASA will go to Venus

[lpetrich]

NASA Selects 4 Possible Missions to Study Secrets of the Solar System | NASA - Feb 13, 2020

NASA Selects 2 Missions to Study ‘Lost Habitable’ World of Venus | NASA - Jun 2, 2021

NASA is awarding approximately $500 million per mission for development. Each is expected to launch in the 2028-2030 timeframe.

...
DAVINCI+ (Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging)

DAVINCI+ will measure the composition of Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved, as well as determine whether the planet ever had an ocean. The mission consists of a descent sphere that will plunge through the planet’s thick atmosphere, making precise measurements of noble gases and other elements to understand why Venus’ atmosphere is a runaway hothouse compared the Earth’s.

In addition, DAVINCI+ will return the first high resolution pictures of the unique geological features on Venus known as “tesserae,” which may be comparable to Earth’s continents, suggesting that Venus has plate tectonics. ...

...
VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy)

VERITAS will map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and understand why it developed so differently than Earth. Orbiting Venus with a synthetic aperture radar, VERITAS will chart surface elevations over nearly the entire planet to create 3D reconstructions of topography and confirm whether processes such as plate tectonics and volcanism are still active on Venus.

VERITAS also will map infrared emissions from Venus’ surface to map its rock type, which is largely unknown, and determine whether active volcanoes are releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. ...

...
“We’re revving up our planetary science program with intense exploration of a world that NASA hasn’t visited in over 30 years,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science. “Using cutting-edge technologies that NASA has developed and refined over many years of missions and technology programs, we’re ushering in a new decade of Venus to understand how an Earth-like planet can become a hothouse. Our goals are profound. It is not just understanding the evolution of planets and habitability in our own solar system, but extending beyond these boundaries to exoplanets, an exciting and emerging area of research for NASA.”

...
In addition to the two missions, NASA selected a pair of technology demonstrations to fly along with them. VERITAS will host the Deep Space Atomic Clock-2, built by JPL and funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The ultra-precise clock signal generated with this technology will ultimately help enable autonomous spacecraft maneuvers and enhance radio science observations.

DAVINCI+ will host the Compact Ultraviolet to Visible Imaging Spectrometer (CUVIS) built by Goddard. CUVIS will make high resolution measurements of ultraviolet light using a new instrument based on freeform optics. These observations will be used to determine the nature of the unknown ultraviolet absorber in Venus’ atmosphere that absorbs up to half the incoming solar energy.

Like Mars, Venus is a Solar-System neighbor, but Venus has not been explored nearly as much as Mars has, for two reasons. Its surface is totally clouded over, and its surface is very hostile, some 450 C and 90 bar. The longest that any spacecraft has survived on its surface is a bit more than 2 hours.

 

[lpetrich]

NASA selects two robotic missions to Venus for launch in late 2020s – Spaceflight Now

Using a more sensitive radar instrument, VERITAS will update the topographic maps created by NASA’s Magellan spacecraft in the early 1990s, potentially revealing whether geologic processes such as volcanoes are currently active on the planet.

DAVINCI+ will send a small probe, measuring roughly 3 feet (1 meter) across, into the thick atmosphere of Venus. The instrumented craft will plunge into Venus’s carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere, deploy a parachute, and descend through cloud layers made of sulfuric acid before eventually landing on the surface.

NASA selects two Venus missions for Discovery program - SpaceNews

DAVINCI+, or Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, will send a probe into the planet’s atmosphere, measuring noble gases and other elements that can provide information on how its runaway greenhouse effect developed. Cameras on the descent probe will provide high-resolution images of geological features known as “tesserae” that may be similar to Earth’s continents.

VERITAS, or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, will map the planet from orbit using a synthetic aperture radar system. It will also search for infrared emissions that could help scientists determine if there is active volcanism.

NASA rejected missions to Jupiter and Neptune's moons: Here's what we might've found out- Technology News, Firstpost
The Io Volcanic Explorer to that volcanic moon of Jupiter.

IVO was designed to perform multiple fly-bys of the moon and use a suite of instruments to map the activity on and below the surface. By collecting information on Io’s magnetic and gravitational fields, taking videos of the enormous lava eruptions and analysing the gas and dust escaping from the moon, IVO would help scientists learn how Io’s heat is generated and lost.

All of this information is crucial – not just for awesome videos of space volcanoes – because this kind of extreme activity is believed to be an important aspect of planetary formation and evolution. By understanding the processes that drive change on Io, we can ultimately learn more about how planets and moons came to be.

The Trident mission to Neptune's moon Triton

The proposed Trident mission would have explored these many strange things about the moon. It proposed a three-pronged approach using instruments to measure the magnetic field of Triton. It would have identified the presence and structure of a subsurface ocean. High-resolution infrared cameras would have allowed the spacecraft to image the entire surface, using the sunlight reflected from Neptune, showing scientists what had changed since the last visit in 1989. Finally, the spacecraft would have tried to discover how Triton’s surface remains so dynamic and young.

 

[lpetrich]

Discovery Program | NASA

Its past missions:

Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous
Launch Date: February 17, 1996
NEAR was the first spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid.

Mars Pathfinder
Launch Date: December 4, 1996
Mars Pathfinder was the first rover to land on another planet and the first rover on Mars.

Lunar Prospector
Launch Date: January 6, 1998
Lunar Prospector found the first direct evidence of water ice on the Moon's poles.

Stardust
Launch Date: February 7, 1999
Stardust was the first spacecraft to return samples from a comet to Earth.

Genesis
Launch Date: August 8, 2001
Genesis returned to Earth the first extraterrestrial material--particles of the solar wind--collected beyond lunar orbit.

CONTOUR
Launch Date: July 3, 2002
CONTOUR (COmet Nucleus TOUR) intended to visit and study two comets, but contact lost after an engine burn. An investigation determined that overheating during the burn caused the spacecraft to break apart.

MESSENGER
Launch Date: August 3, 2004
The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging--better known as MESSENGER--orbited Mercury for more than four years.

Deep Impact
Launch Date: January 12, 2005
Deep Impact is history's most traveled deep-space comet hunter.

Dawn
Launch Date: September 27, 2007
Dawn was the first mission to visit Ceres and the first mission to visit Vesta--the two largest objects in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Kepler
Launch Date: March 7, 2009
Kepler left behind a legacy of more than 2,600 planet discoveries from outside our solar system.

GRAIL
Launch date: September 10, 2011
Short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, the GRAIL mission flew twin spacecraft--Ebb and Flow--in tandem around the Moon.

A solid record of successes.

 

[lpetrich]

Active:

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Launch date: June 18, 2009
LRO is a robotic spacecraft that set out to map the lunar surface.

InSight
Launch date: May 5, 2018
InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is exploring the deep interior of Mars.

Future:

Lucy
Launch date: October, 2021
Lucy will visit a main belt asteroid and six Trojan asteroids, a unique family of asteroids that orbit the Sun in front of and behind Jupiter.

Psyche
Launch date: August, 2022
The Psyche mission will explore one of the most intriguing targets in the main asteroid belt – a giant metal-rich asteroid, known as 16 Psyche, about three times farther away from the Sun than is the Earth.

MEGANE
Launch date: September, 2024
The MEGANE spectrometer instrument on the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency's Mars Moons eXploration mission is a "mission of opportunity" selected by the Discovery Program.

Then the most recent selections:

DAVINCI+
Launch date: 2028-2030 timeframe
The ​Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry, and Imaging, or DAVINCI+, mission will measure the composition of Venus’ atmosphere to understand how it formed and evolved, as well as determine whether the planet ever had an ocean.

VERITAS
Launch date: 2028-2030 timeframe
The Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, or VERITAS, mission will map Venus’ surface to determine the planet’s geologic history and understand why it developed so differently than Earth.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Any mission into Venus' atmosphere is going to be relatively short lived, there's no getting around that. I can't wait to see the results of this mission, though.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Looking for love in the wrong place?

 

[untermensche]

NASA will send something to Venus.

It is not relocating there.

 

[rjh01]

One possibility is for an airship to explore the atmosphere. It would be able to do a lot of science for weeks at a time.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, TX -- Support for explorations of Venus are typically low due to the costs involved and the lack of long-term capabilities in light of the toxic conditions on a planet baking at 450 degrees Celsius and an atmosphere that is highly acidic. NASA has yet to design equipment that can survive longer than 20 minutes once making touchdown, and the cost to produce even that sort of equipment has been prohibitive, which is the reason for more missions to Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

However, NASA has announced their breakthrough on mission planning for Venus that will save the mission a "substantial amount" of money. Instead of providing funding for the development of hardened equipment that would just survive less than an hour once entering the atmosphere after season's long journey to get to the embattled planet, NASA will just stuff the probe with $100 million in US currency and just let it burn up in an uncontrolled destructive burn in the atmosphere. NASA estimates that this will result in around 70% of savings the mission.

The probe will be equipped with a single transmitter and once that goes out, it'll just be assumed the probe was destroyed and NASA can continue other projects of exploring the universe that will actually provide benefits to scientists.

 

[steve_bank]

NASA is relocating?

 

[bilby]

It appears that both of these missions originated in the office of Future missions to Uncover Complexity in high Kelvin Environments Developed Using Protocols from nAsa Command, Research and OrgaNisational sYstems to Maintain Space exploration.

They could just give them a name from classical mythology, or use an initialism for a phrase that's meaningful, without forming a real English word. But apparently that's no longer an option for NASA.