venus mission Archives

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Practical Use for Space Power: Beaming Energy to Probes on Venus

The first color pictures taken of the surface of Venus by the Venera-13 space probe. Credit: NASA — The first color pictures taken of the surface of Venus by the Venera-13 space probe. The Venera 13 probe lasted only 127 minutes before succumbing to Venus's extreme surface environment. Part of building a longer-lasting Venus lander is figuring out how to power it. Credit: NASA

A few weeks ago, a team of scientists from Caltech announced that they had successfully transmitted energy from an orbiting satellite down to Earth. It wasn’t a lot of energy, but it showed that it was possible.

Eventually, we might be able to beam energy from solar satellites down to Earth, making solar energy available almost anywhere and helping combat climate change. But there’s another potential use: powering surface probes on Venus.

January 25, 2022January 25, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

A Private Mission to Scan the Cloud Tops of Venus for Evidence of Life

The search for life on Venus has a fascinating history. Carl Sagan famously and sarcastically said there were obviously dinosaurs there since a thick haze we couldn’t see through covered the surface. More recently, evidence has pointed to a more nuanced idea of how life might exist on our sister planet. A recent announcement of phosphine in the Venusian atmosphere caused quite a stir in the research community and numerous denials from other research groups. But science moves on, and now some of the researchers involved in the phosphine finding have come up with a series of small missions that will help settle the question more thoroughly – by directly sampling Venus’ atmosphere for the first time in almost 40 years.

July 28, 2021July 28, 2021 by David Dickinson

Balloon Mission May Also Work to Detect Quakes on Venus

An opportunity in 2019 lays the groundwork for balloon-borne detectors on Venus, working to unravel a key mystery.

The skies of Venus may become a busy place in the coming decade, using technology field-tested here on Earth.

A team out of NASA JPL-Caltech hypothesized that terrestrial earthquakes should also produce low-frequency infrasonic sound waves, which would be transmitted from the ground through the atmosphere as changes in barometric pressure. These sound waves, while difficult to detect, should be measurable via highly sensitive barometers carried aloft.