NASA to send two spacecraft to investigate Venus

NASA has announced recently it's selected two new official missions, Veritas and Davinci+, to go to Venus as part of the agency's Discovery Program.

Each mission will receive $500 million for development, with an expected launch time frame of 2028 to 2030, reports CNET.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson shared the selection during his State of NASA address on Wednesday.

Mars may be the star of NASA's planetary exploration efforts these days, but blazing-hot Venus has been beckoning scientists, especially after a 2020 study examined the possible presence of phosphine, a gas that is sometimes produced by microbes, in the planet's clouds.

The Veritas (for "Venus emissivity, radio science, InSAR, topography and spectroscopy") mission is designed to map the surface of Venus in search of answers to how it and Earth diverged so radically.

It will look to see if volcanoes and other geologic processes are still active.

Davinci+ (deep atmosphere Venus investigation of noble gases, chemistry, and imaging) will focus on the atmosphere of Venus and look into whether the planet once had oceans.

"DAVINCI+ plunges through Venus' inhospitable atmosphere to precisely measure its composition down to the surface," said NASA about the proposal.

NASA's Discovery Program, which kicked off in 1992, is focused on smaller planetary science missions that fill in gaps in NASA's current lineup of missions like the Perseverance rover on Mars and the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter.

"It is astounding how little we know about Venus, but the combined results of these missions will tell us about the planet from the clouds in its sky through the volcanoes on its surface all the way down to its very core," said Tom Wagner, NASA's Discovery Program scientist, said in a statement.

will be as if we have rediscovered the planet," said the report.